Streetsblog Chicago

Revolution Brewing owner Josh Deth, left; employee Bert Velilla is drilling. Photo by John Greenfield.

Lovers of sustainable transportation and beer rejoice! As I type this, on-street bike racks are being bolted into the asphalt in front of Revolution Brewing, 2323 North Milwaukee in Logan Square. This will be Chicago’s fifth on-street bike parking corral, replacing car parking spaces with bike racks. I talked with owner Josh Deth (an old friend of mine) about the benefits of the corral for his businesses and the community, and the sometimes-challenging process of navigating the city’s bureaucracy for permits.

John Greenfield: Congratulations on finally getting your on-street bike parking corral installed. You’ve been trying to get this installed for several weeks now. What happened that you were finally able to do it?

Josh Deth: Well, it’s a partnership with the city of Chicago’s bike program and the First Ward office. Alderman Joe Moreno was really helpful. He helped get the two parking spaces moved elsewhere in the ward [since the contract with parking concessionaire Chicago Parking Meters requires the city to compensate the company for any lost meter revenue.] We had to move two parking spots – it’s a 40-foot-long bike corral, the biggest one in the city. It kind of took a while. We had to get a right-of-way permit, we had to do a use agreement with the Department of Law, we had to get insurance certificates, we had to get the design reviewed and approved, order the racks, that kind of stuff. So there were a lot of little steps involved.

JG: What was the tipping point that allowed you to move forward with installation?

JD: We got the right-of-way permit yesterday from CDOT, we got the use agreement from the law department last week, and those were the final steps.

That evening, the RevBrew racks were already getting plenty of use. Photo by Steven Vance.

JG: Are you going to be adding planters?

JD: No. That’s a little bit of a sore subject. There is no city standard planter. This is like the city’s standard bike corral manufactured by Saris up in Madison, Wisconsin. In order to do planters there was a requirement to get an architect of record to make architectural drawings. That was going to cost more than the bike racks themselves. Plus, there was the cost of the planters themselves being fabricated. We ran into a lot of bureaucratic hurdles.

JG: So what do you think the corral is going to do for your business?

JD: It’s going to be great. You know, we had a bike crash occur today, just down the road a bit on Milwaukee. It was very sad. I think the woman’s going to be OK. But while we were here installing the racks there has been an endless stream of bikes. People have been coming by and saying, “Awesome,” “Congratulations,” and “That’s so cool.”

So, obviously, it’s going to allow more people to comfortably park their bikes to come into Revolution, to go to Threads Etc. [a neighboring consignment shop]. Cole [Bryson, owner of nearby Cole’s bar] came by and checked it out – he thought it was really cool. The Threads guys came by and thought it was really cool.

It’s going to encourage people to shop on the strip. There is something like two restaurants, a bar and a distillery coming in at the end of the block here, so there’s going to be a lot more activity around here. We need make room for them to be able to bike here. We’re going to have room for 20 bikes where there were two parking spots. So it’s not just for Revolution, it’s for all the neighboring businesses.

Read more…

Condo board president David Lewis indicates the height and proximity of a ramp.

The residents of 400 S Green Street, the building where the Illinois Department of Transportation plans to build a new highway ramp just a few feet away, have begun a petition to rally neighbors in opposition to the project.

The proposed flyover is part of IDOT’s $400 million Circle Interchange expansion, a project that the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s myriad committees allowed onto the funding list for the GO TO 2040 regional plan, even though it conflicts with the plan’s commitments to transit, livability, and sustainability.

IDOT’s “preferred alternative” for the project, known as Alternative 7.1C, calls for building a highway ramp next to 400 S Green, while a different variation, which IDOT rejected in mysterious fashion, would avoid building the new ramp.

Asserting that “the inclusion of the flyovers in an urban environment divides communities, creates unsafe viaducts, and increases noise and pollution,” the petition lists the many reasons people tend to not want flyovers or highway ramps outside their windows. For example:

Overpass structures create a darker and dirtier environment. Threatening to pedestrians. This ramp will also be located outside the Halsted Street Blue Line station where people need to wait for buses and enter/exit the station.

Some signers are leaving comments about how Alternative 7.1C would affect Chicagoans:

Read more…

Earlier this week, the people at Walk Score updated its rankings of America’s most bikeable cities, and Chicago came in at number 10. In addition, they released a city-by-city list of the most bikeable neighborhoods.

You can see Chicago’s top bikeable neighborhoods as rated by Walk Score in the map above. (Eight “neighborhoods” listed in the WalkScore spreadsheet didn’t have matching areas in the neighborhood map data from Chicago and are therefore not shown on the map.) Here’s their ranking of the top ten Chicago neighborhoods for biking:

1. East Ukrainian Village: 89.3
2. Ukrainian Village: 87
3. Wicker Park: 86.8
4. Illinois Medical District: 86.5
5. Noble Square: 86.1
6. East Pilsen: 85.9
7. Margate Park: 84.2
8. West Loop Gate: 84
9. Sheridan Park: 83.7
10. Fulton River District: 83.4

Anything on the list surprise you? I think not having Logan Square is the big upset, coming in at number 58, but it only has bike lanes on Palmer and Milwaukee for less than 1.5 miles! I wouldn’t have picked up on Illinois Medical District having a high BikeScore. When I re-read the factors Walk Score considers, it was still a head-scratcher:

Read more…

Final CDOT design for Berteau between Ashland and Greenview.

It’s been a long time in the making, but it looks like the Berteau Neighborhood Greenway, albeit a somewhat watered-down version, will be debuting this summer. On Friday 47th Ward Alderman Ameya Pawar announced that in June the Chicago Department of Transportation will begin construction of the greenway, a traffic-calmed, bike-priority street, known elsewhere as a “bike boulevard,” on a one-mile stretch between Lincoln and Clark. The work will start immediately after the city’s water department replaces a 100-year-old water main on Berteau between Ravenswood and Ashland.

The $120,000 bike project, bankrolled by the alderman’s discretionary “menu” funds, will likely be ready to ride by the end of the summer, according Pawar’s assistant Bill Higgins. “We’re really happy with the final design,” Higgins said. “It’s hard to make everyone happy but we think it will work out well in the end.” Check out CDOT’s design drawings here.

Pawar discusses plans for the greenway at a community meeting last August. Photo by Steven Gross.

In other cities bike boulevards are residential streets where speeding and cut-through traffic are discouraged through the use of traffic calming devices and/or traffic diverters – bump-outs, cul-de-sacs and other structures which prevent cars from driving down the entire length of the street or making certain turns. Meanwhile, contraflow bicycle lanes allow bikes to travel in both directions on one-way sections, and the diverters have cutouts that permit cyclists to continue unimpeded. CDOT originally proposed included diverters in the Berteau Greenway design, as well as a chicane, a slalom routes designed to slow drivers down. However, after residents at community meetings last year kvetched about having to change their driving habits, these ideas were scrapped.

Arguably the final product is not really a bike boulevard, since westbound motorists will still be able to drive the whole stretch, and it won’t be an “8-to-80″ bike facility because cyclists may be exposed to the occasional speeder. However, the features that made the cut will still be a big improvement over existing conditions on Berteau. Sections of contraflow bike lane, including a dedicated bike signal at Damen, will allow eastbound cyclists to safely travel from Lincoln to Clark. Green paint at conflict points and shared lane markings on the two-way sections will remind drivers to watch out for cyclists.

Read more…

Voting in the 5th Ward Participatory Budgeting election. Photo courtesy of PB Chicago.

The results of last week’s participatory budgeting elections show that, when you give them a chance, Chicago residents are happy to support projects that make our streets safer, more efficient and more vibrant. The 5th, 45th, 46th and 49th wards took part in the PB process, which allows citizens to propose ideas for each district’s $1.3 million in discretionary “menu” money and then vote on the projects that make it on the final ballot. While aldermen traditionally decide how menu money is used, and normally opt for basic street, sidewalk and lighting improvements, these results mean several innovative walking, biking, transit and public space initiatives will debut in the near future.

A whopping 1,400 participants cast ballots in the Far North Side’s 49th Ward, where Alderman Joe Moore first pioneered the process in 2010. “The participatory budgeting elections have exceeded even my wildest dreams,” said Moore in a statement. ”They are more than elections.  They are community celebrations and an affirmation that people will participate in the civic affairs of their community if given real power to make real decisions.”

His constituents voted to spend $30,000 on a pedestrian safety engineering study on Sheridan, which could lead to improvements like curb extensions to shorten crossing distances, and changes to stoplight and walk signal timing. They also voted to use $75,000 to install shared-lane markings for bikes on Clark from Howard to Albion. Other proposals that won funding included new sidewalks, the restoration of cobblestones on Glennwood, and cherry blossom trees and a new water fountain at Touhy Park.

In Leslie Hairston’s 5th Ward, on the south lakefront, the transportation committee for the PB process proposed 23 different projects, including many nontraditional ideas for promoting biking and transit use. However, unlike the other three aldermen, Hairston decided to designate these as “service requests” that should instead be funded by city departments, the CTA or the park district. The alderman has asked members of the committee to follow up with the relevant agencies to make sure these projects are completed, with the understanding that she has prioritized them, although she declined to fund them. However, street, sidewalk and lighting repairs, which can also be paid for by city agencies, were left on the PB ballot.

Perhaps not coincidentally, turnout in the 5th Ward PB election was relatively low, with only about 100 voters. “As word spreads, we look forward to more people taking part in next year’s Participatory Budgeting process,” said 5th Ward Chief of Staff Kimberl Webb in a statement. The winning three projects are an urban garden, street lamp improvements, and new lighting in Metra viaducts.

Read more…

A bike sharing station will be installed at Pritzker Park downtown.

Last month we reported on the first bike-share stations locations to be made public. Now more station locations are being revealed every day on the official Divvy Bikes Facebook page, and 1st Ward Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno has released a map of 19 locations.

The Divvy Bikes Facebook page will reveal another location each day, showing the station location on a map describing some of the nearby points of interest, as well as revealing the name of the sponsor. Currently all are sponsored by the Chicago Department of Transportation. CDOT spokesperson Pete Scales said that a full map will be on the Divvy website “when it starts to accept memberships later this month,” and possibly in two weeks.

Ten locations have been posted:

• Taylor & May, near Sheridan Park in Little Italy and a lot of retail, shopping, and services.
• Pritzker Park across from the Harold Washington Library Center at State & Van Buren.
• Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum near the Lincoln Park Zoo, Lincoln Park lagoon, and the Lakefront Trail.
• Damen & Pierce, for the Damen Blue Line station.
• 19th & Wells for Ping Tom Memorial Park in Chinatown.
• McCormick Place Metra for the convention center and hotel.
• Streeter Dr & Illinois St for Navy Pier
• Museum Campus, between the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium
• Clinton & Washington, serving Northwestern Train Station
• Dayton & North, for North/Clybourn Red Line Station and shopping centers

Read more…

The new taxi sticker design.

Yesterday Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced the 2013 Bicycle Safety Ordinance to City Council, including plans to double the fines for motorists who door bicyclists from $500 to $1,000, as well as to raise fines for cyclists who break traffic laws from $25 to a range of $50-$200, depending on the infraction. Emanuel also announced that all 7,000 Chicago taxicabs will be required to display “Look! Before Opening Your Door” stickers to help prevent injuries to people on bikes and other road users. The ordinance was sent to the Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee for consideration.

“If they are sharing the roadway with vehicles, cyclists need to obey all traffic laws, including yielding to pedestrians, stopping at traffic signals and indicating when they are making turns,” Emanuel said in a statement. “When the traffic laws are obeyed, everyone is safer. By increasing the fines for failing to obey the law, cyclists will behave more responsibly, increasing safety and encouraging others to ride bikes.”

There were more than 250 dooring crashes in the city last year. In addition to doubling the dooring fine, the new ordinance would raise the penalty for leaving a vehicle door open in traffic from $150 to $300. The new red, transparent taxi stickers were designed by MINIMAL design studios, whose employee Neill Townsend was killed after he swerved to avoid a car door and was over by a truck on the Near North Side as he rode to work.

“Taxicab drivers need to be aware of cyclists traveling near their vehicles, but their customers must also take the time to look before opening doors into traffic,” Mayor Emanuel said. “These stickers will remind taxi customers to be more conscious of their surroundings before they exit the vehicle,” Emanuel said.

While cyclists have applauded the anti-dooring initiatives, some aren’t happy about the city raising the fines for bicycle violations, since running stop signs or stoplights on a bike is much less likely to cause injury to others than breaking the same laws in a car. “I’m all for safety but there are certainly non-reckless ways to go through a red light [on a bike],” Tony Adams posted on The Chainlink, a local social networking site for cyclists. “It makes no sense to sit at a red light, or come to a complete stop at a stop sign if there is no cross traffic with the right of way.”

Active Transportation Alliance Director Ron Burke said his organization supports higher fines for dangerous behavior by cyclists. “Like motorists and even pedestrians who use roads recklessly, people who ride bikes recklessly should also be ticketed,” he said in a post on the group’s website. “We don’t endorse ticketing cyclists and drivers for minor violations that put no one at risk. Let the police focus on more important matters. But if you’re putting people at risk, a ticket is warranted whether you’re biking, walking or driving.”

Read more…

Yes, the ad actually says, "No booty call shall go unanswered."

On a recent trip on my “other bike,” AKA the ‘L,’ I spotted two advertisements promoting Zipcar that could have easily been converted into advertisements for bike-share. Car-share and bike-share serve different purposes, but there’s also some overlap — car-share providers want to capture some trips that you could also make on a public bike. With Chicago’s Divvy bike-share system set to launch soon, let’s see whether we can adapt these Zipcar ads to the bike-share context.

The first ad, above, says, “No booty call shall go unanswered.” Too saucy for a public bike system? Maybe, but there’s no doubt Divvy bikes can help you with that (and it’s cheaper than renting a car). Bike-share would also give you a bit more flexibility than Zipcar’s hourly rates, since the trip on Divvy would be free in each direction as long as you can pedal there in 30 minutes or less.

Zipcar marketing trades on the fact that car ownership is a hassle.

The smaller text in the same advertisement says, “Hundreds of cars and vans across Chicago are available by the hour or day. Gas and insurance included.” This part would have to change to advertise bike-share. The Divvy version could say, “Thousands of bicycles across Chicago are available for unlimited 30 minute trips around town, and you don’t have to pay for gas or insurance.”

The second ad, which I saw behind the seats, says, “It’s like owning a car without all the sucky parts.” Ah yes, sometimes owning the vehicle, even if that vehicle is a low-cost bicycle, has sucky parts. For Divvy, I’d propose, “It’s like owning a bike without all the sucky parts, like flat tires, rusty chains, and stolen seats.”

Divvy will launch in June with 75 stations in downtown Chicago and River North. A day pass will cost $7, less than one hour of driving a Zipcar (and that doesn’t include the cost of parking). An annual Divvy membership will be $75.

Finally, it’s good to see that these Zipcar ads, unlike some of the company’s prior campaigns (below), don’t disparage people who ride bikes or take transit.

Zipcar's old ads disparaged biking and transit instead of owning a car.

Kids at a PlayStreets car-free event. Photo courtesy of CLOCC.

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

“The built environment plays a huge role when it comes to people being able to be physically active,” says Grant Vitale, community programs manager for the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC). The group, based out of the Lurie Children’s Hospital, is an association of many local, statewide and national organizations working to help kids maintain healthy weight levels by encouraging better nutrition, as well as walking, biking and active play.

The rate of childhood obesity in the U.S. has more than tripled over the last three decades, and in 2008 Chicago’s obesity rate for young kids entering school was 22 percent, more than twice the national average. In some neighborhoods, mostly low-income African-American and Latino communities, over half of all children are overweight or obese. These areas tend to have less green space and higher pedestrian crash rates than wealthier neighborhoods, which discourages active transportation and recreation.

Over the last two years, CLOCC has partnered with the Chicago Department of Public Health on a $5.8 million, federally funded anti-obesity campaign called Healthy Places. The program has focused on creating safe streets and parks, as well as creating healthier schools, eliminating food deserts and promoting breast feeding.

“Through Healthy Places we were able to provide financial support to ten community-based organizations across the city to implement community interventions,” Vitale says. “One intervention that we asked all the groups to implement was a walkability initiative. We trained them on CLOCC’s neighborhood walkability assessment tool, which helps identify barriers to walking and biking.” An assessment might show the need for traffic calming, like speed bumps, or infrastructure to make crossing the street safer, such as curb extensions or pedestrian refuge islands.

One of the community groups that Healthy Places funded was the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, based in a predominantly Latino area on the Southwest Side, which wanted to make it easier for kids to access Kelly Park, 2725 West 41st. “Using our walkability tool, they looked at routes to the park,” Vitale says. “For example, they identified crosswalks that needed restriping. Many parents called 311 in an organized way and were able to get those crosswalks restriped in a short amount of time.”

Read more…

A community expo for the 5th Ward participatory budgeting process. Photo courtesy of PB Chicago.

Traditionally, Chicago aldermen choose to spend their discretionary “menu” funds on meat-and-potatoes infrastructure projects like street repaving, sidewalk repair, and streetlight replacement. This week, however, residents in four different wards are voting in participatory budgeting elections, helping to decide how their district’s $1.3 million in menu money will be spent. Three of the wards will have innovative walking, biking, and transit proposals on the ballot, but one of them won’t.

In Joe Moore’s 49th Ward, the Far North district that first pioneered the PB process here in 2010, options include shared-lane markings for bikes on Clark, bus stop benches, a 150-foot-long Metra platform shelter, and a pedestrian safety study for Sheridan Road. Constituents in John Arena’s 45th Ward, on the Far Northwest Side, can vote for buffered bike lanes on Milwaukee and Lawrence, bike parking corrals, and a pedestrian crossing light at the Jefferson Park Transit Center, which will also improve bus access.

James Cappleman’s 46th Ward, on the north lakefront, has several forward-thinking transportation items on the ballot: new bike lanes, a traffic-calmed “neighborhood greenway” on Leland, and pedestrian safety infrastructure like sidewalk bumpouts and countdown signals. One proposal calls for connecting a traffic island at Broadway/Sheridan/Montrose to create a new public space dubbed “SherMon Plaza.”

As I reported last month, there will be no nontraditional transportation projects on the ballot in Alderman Leslie Hairston’s 5th Ward, the only South Side district to participate. It’s not because her constituents don’t want them. During community meetings last fall to brainstorm items for the PB election, residents put forth 23 different proposals to the transportation committee, including many ideas to improve conditions for walking, biking, and transit.

They proposed new curb cuts to provide wheelchair access; realigning bus stops so that people exiting would step onto concrete, not muddy grass; new bus benches and shelters; and pedestrian safety improvements by the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club. Ideas to promote cycling included repairs to the Lakefront Trail and paths within Jackson Park; building a buffered bike lane delineated with flexible posts on 67th; and bike parking racks at Metra stations.

However, at a Valentine’s Day meeting, the transportation committee was told Hairston had designated all 23 ideas as “service requests,” which should be paid for by agencies like the Chicago Department of Transportation, the CTA and the park district. Therefore, none of these ideas would be on the PB ballot. “We don’t need to spend ward money on [those projects],” 5th Ward Chief of Staff Kimberly Webb told me last month. In my post on the subject I stated, “[Participatory budgeting] is not a truly a democratic process when all ideas for improving walking, biking, and transit are taken off the table.”

Two weeks after I sent a link to the article to Hairston’s publicist Carole Parks, she wrote to say my statement that the alderman had eliminated sustainable transportation proposals from the process was false. “Some of those projects will be on the ballot,” she said. “Kimberly Webb made clear to you the alderman committed to ensuring the other PB5-generated projects would also be implemented by the respective agency.” She directed me to the ward’s page on the PB Chicago website, which features a slideshow from one of the community expos for the process. The slideshow includes the proposals for realigning bus stops and improvements to the lakefront and Jackson Park bike paths.

Read more…