Streetsblog Chicago

A memorial for Bobby Cann on Clybourn Avenue.

Robert “Bobby” Cann was cycling on Clybourn Avenue last Wednesday when he was hit and killed by Ryne San Hamel, 28, of Park Ridge, driving a Mercedes sedan at 50 MPH, with a blood-alcohol content of .127, according to police. San Hamel appeared in court on Saturday where he was charged with reckless homicide, aggravated DUI, misdemeanor DUI, reckless driving, and failure to stay in the lane. He is being held on $100,000 bond and had his passport revoked.

Attorney Mike Keating provided an excellent summary of what these charges mean on his blog:

Reckless homicide is when a person unintentionally kills another person while behaving recklessly. Unintentionally means that there was no criminal intent to kill the person. Reckless means that the person was acting with total disregard for the safety and welfare of others. The difference between a murder charge and a reckless homicide charge is the idea of “criminal intent” and whether the person was actually setting out to kill the other person. Keep reading.

Critical Mass visits the crash site.

On Friday evening, the monthly Critical Mass bike ride passed by a memorial to Cann. Riders raised their bikes in a salute to Cann, held a moment of silence, and then applauded.

On The Chainlink, a discussion has started about the significance of pushing for protected bike lanes across the city, as well as blaming the driver for choosing to get behind the wheel while drunk. The question is, if San Hamel had a BAC of less than 0.08, the legal limit, would he still be blamed for the crash? Would it have just been an “accident” that protected bike lanes might have prevented? A barrier is the only way to protect a bicyclist from a car traveling at 50 mph, whether the driver is drunk or sober.

San Hamel is scheduled to appear at the Cook County courthouse at 26th and California on July 17 at 9 a.m., and 18th District police officers are seeking volunteer court advocates. A post on Velocipede Salon explains that this means “the police coordinate with concerned citizens who appear in court to show their support for the case. The sense is, when the community gets involved it sends a signal to the judge that this isn’t ‘just another DUI’ and helps to encourage stricter sentencing.” You can contact the 18th District CAPS officers at 312-742-5778 for more info. Updated: More details on The Chainlink from Active Transportation Alliance’s Jason Jenkins.

Bob Kastigar, a longtime Chicago bike activist and Critical Mass rider, has started a petition demanding that the county’s top prosecutor, Anita Alvarez, send the case to court instead of making a plea bargain. People from around the United States, and one from Canada, are signing on to have San Hamel stand “in open and public court.”

As it stands, the Chicago Department of Transportation can not install protected bike lanes, which shelter cyclists from out-of-control cars, on Clybourn. This is because the Illinois Department of Transportation has prohibited the installation of protected lanes on state jurisdiction roads until CDOT collects three years of “safety data” on existing Chicago PBLs. IDOT has not blocked installation of buffered bike lanes.

Perhaps responding to our coverage of the crash, which mentioned the PBL issue, and/or online discussions that followed on venues like The Chainlink, on Friday IDOT tweeted a two-part message that they support CDOT’s efforts to install buffered lanes on Clybourn.

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Looking northwest at the Infiniti car. Photo: Jon Kobiljak, via DNA Info.

Police are questioning the driver of a Mercedes who was involved in a head-on collision with an Inifiti and then fatally struck cyclist Robert “Bobby” Cann, 26, from behind. The crash took place while the Mercedes driver and Cann were traveling southeast on Clybourn Avenue near Larrabee Street in Old Town. The driver, who stayed on the scene, is in policy custody but any charges have yet to be filed, pending an investigation, according to Police News Affairs. Police have not released the driver’s name, but DNAinfo reports that he is 28 years old.

Marcus Moore, owner of Yojimbo’s Garage, a bike shop (the building with the red door in the photos), didn’t see the crash, but helped the three occupants of the Mercedes exit the car. He said they did not appear injured. While Moore was helping them out of the car, someone on the sidewalk said, “Where’d the bicyclist go?” It was then that he realized a cyclist was involved and saw Cann lying in the street 40 feet from the damaged cars, with his leg severed and blood coming out of his mouth, he said.

Overhead view of the Mercedes on Clybourn Avenue. Photo: Jon Kobiljak, via DNA Info.

Moore believes the driver of the Mercedes rear ended Cann, after which Cann landed on the hood and collapsed the car’s windshield. He said it’s possible the crash occurred in the intersection of Larrabee and Clybourn, or within 20 feet. Cann worked at Groupon on Larrabee/Kingsbury a half-mile south. Given that it was after work, and Cann lived in Lakeview, Moore believes Cann was cycling north on Larrabee before the crash and that the impact happened within the intersection, though he ended up lying on Clybourn.

The car-bike crash might have been avoided if this stretch of Clybourn had protected bike lanes. The Chicago Department of Transportation has proposed building protected lanes on Clybourn. However, Clybourn is an Illinois Department of Transportation-jurisdiction street, and IDOT has instituted a ban on PBLs on roads that fall under its jurisdiction until 2014, when three years of “safety data” on existing Chicago protected lanes becomes available.

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Actually, Jon, lots of people ride bike-share wearing suits. Photo by Jonathan Maus, Bike Portland.

I’ve long considered the Chicago Tribune’s Jon Hilkevitch to be one of Chicago’s best transportation writers. He works fast, gets his numbers straight and often gets the scoop on important stories, usually writing from a pro-walking, biking and transit perspective. For example, I always enjoy re-reading a brilliant article he wrote back in 2005, skewering the Daley administration’s pro-car policies. I appreciate that he provides a level-headed foil to his colleague columnist John Kass, a notorious bike-baiter.

Over the last few weeks Hilkevitch has been doing a solid job of updating the public on the city’s plans to roll out the Divvy bike-share system, which promises to dramatically boost the number of cyclists, which will in turn lead to safer streets. However, he really let the kids down with yesterday’s disappointing faux-exposé, “Overtime fees, legal potholes dot city bike-share program.”

Just Monday, after Divvy bikes debuted at Bike the Drive, Hilkevitch ran a detailed, informative piece about the system, which demonstrated a good understanding of how bike-share will work. “The idea is to take a bike here and leave it there to complete a trip or use a bicycle instead of other transportation choices that may be slower, more expensive or add to traffic congestion,” he wrote.

In that article Hilkevitch quoted Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein as saying the bikes, equipped with fenders and chainguards, are practical to ride in professional clothes. “You can wear a suit and feel totally fine, like you are not going to get it dirty,” Klein said.

However, yesterday’s anti-Divvy piece seems to be written by someone unclear on the concept of how successful bike-share systems function. It’s almost as if Hilkevitch’s editor told him to trash the program in order to draw extra pageviews, or perhaps, between writing the two articles, the reporter came down with a mild case of amnesia.

Test-riding Divvy cycles at Bike the Drive. Photo by Steven Vance.

In the wake of yesterday’s successful registration launch, which saw more than 700 people sign up for annual memberships, Hilkevitch seems to be trying to pour water on the enthusiasm over this exciting new program. “Cycling enthusiasts might think someone let the air out of biking’s joie de vivre after reading the accompanying 17-page rental agreement and liability-waiver form,” he writes.

Actually, all of the rules and fees he lists are typical of wildly successful bike-share programs in other cities, like the one Klein launched in Washington, D.C., Capital Bikeshare. The steeply rising fees for keeping a bike over a half-hour, and the $1,200 replacement cost for the cycles should come as no surprise to Hilkevitch, and there are very good reasons for them. As he was probably aware, the late charges are there to ensure that the bikes keep circulating, and $1,200 is a reasonable price for heavy-duty, weatherproof bikes with unique, theft-resistant parts and features like generator lights and GPS.

In the last section of the article, Hilkevitch implies that Divvy is likely to fail, even though similar systems are thriving in peer cities:

But already, skeptics are questioning the cost and whether bicycle sharing is the next parking meter deal. The skeptics also question whether bicycle sharing stands even a chance of being as popular in Chicago as it has been in Washington, on the West Coast and in other metropolitan areas.

I’m not sure how a $22 million, federally funded transportation program that may well pay for itself has anything to do with a privatization deal that cost the city billions. And there’s no reason bike-share shouldn’t be even more successful here than D.C. Unlike the District, Chicago is completely flat, and we’re soon going to have a lot more protected bike lanes than that city. But it’s true that Divvy doesn’t have a chance of being as popular as existing West Coast bike-share programs. There are no comparable West Coast systems yet.

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Attorney Jim Freeman giving out a bike light at an event his firm co-sponsored.

The Law Office of Brendan H. Kevenides and the Law Offices of James M. Freeman, both sponsors of Streetsblog Chicago, are merging to create Freeman Kevenides Law Firm. Both firms originally focused on cases involving people who were struck while biking, while Freeman also took on pedestrian crash cases. The new firm will continue the advocacy they’re known for, but with greater strength and frequency, Freeman and Kevenides say.

I interviewed the pair over the phone and email. The following is an edited transcript.

Steven Vance: Why are you two joining forces?

Jim Freeman: We complement each other. He’s going to bring a traditional flair to the firm. I’m sitting here talking to you wearing jeans and a T-shirt, or I might be wearing a jersey with some spandex and cleats. That’s the way I roll, dude. I think that Brendan and I both recognize our community as a team as opposed to competing with one another.

Brendan Kevenides biking on Milwaukee Avenue, probably on his way to an event to volunteer.

With respect to our litigation skills, I’m an artful negotiator, while Brendan is a trial attorney to the core. Brendan has also established an undeniably dominant presence on the internet. We intend to use his internet presence to educate cyclists about safety and legal issues.

SV: Will this change your two firms’ respective advocacy efforts?

JF: Our hope is that by combining our efforts and skills we will be able to champion causes that we would have been unable to take otherwise. It can be tough for a sole practitioner to take on a pro-bono case or to undertake advocacy efforts that don’t pay the bills. We anticipate that our partnership will make it easier for both of us to advocate on behalf of our client base in a scope that extends well beyond helping injured people on an individual basis.

Sometimes you have to take on small cases that mean big things for the community or the individual. Our livelihood is built around handling big injury cases and we now have the luxury to be rich and self-righteous.

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This plaza by the Tribune Building would be a good place for a Divvy docking station. Unfortunately, Alderman Brendan Reilly vetoed the location. Photo by John Greenfield.

Yesterday’s article about Divvy bike-share in Crain’s touched on a couple of interesting aspects of Chicago’s road to launching the Divvy bike-share system, which should lead to a huge spike in ridership and safer conditions for cycling.

I was pleased to read that Josh Squire, owner of the rental company Bike Chicago (a Streetsblog Chicago sponsor), which runs the Millennium Park bike station, seems to be backing down from his challenge to the bike-share contract. Squire, a rival bidder, had protested that the process was unfair because Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein had previously done consulting work for Alta Bicycle Share, the contract awardee, although Klein said he recused himself from the process.

Squire contested the award, which likely delayed the Divvy launch and made him come across as a sore loser, but now he’s doing the right thing and giving up his battle. “Do I want to waste my time fighting the city of Chicago when we’ve been a partner of the city?” he told Crain’s. “It is what it is. No matter who ends up operating the program, it’s great for Chicago.”

Josh Squire at a docking station for B-Cycle Chicago, the small-scale bike-share system he launched in 2010. Photo: Chicago Reader.

That’s a wise attitude because, in the long run, Divvy is going to help Squire’s bike rental and tour business. Since bike-share rates rise steeply after the first half-hour, the bike-share system isn’t really going to compete with his company’s hourly and daily rentals. And by adding thousands of new cyclists to the city streets, Divvy is going make drivers more aware of bikes, boosting safety for Squire’s customers. It will also raise Chicago’s profile as a bike-friendly city, which means more visitors will be interested in signing up for Squire’s guided tours.

Unfortunately, not all bicycle entrepreneurs are taking the long view on Divvy. Manuel Tenorio, owner of the two Johnny Sprockets bicycles stores, convinced 44^th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney not to approve a docking station near his Lakeview shop, arguing that the station would take up space he could use for bike parking racks. “I opposed it because no one talked to us about it,” he told Crain’s. “I’m not going to say yes to anything without any information. There’s none of that. I potentially wouldn’t oppose it if they talked to us.”

It’s possible the Chicago Department of Transportation and Alta could be doing a better job of communicating with business owners. But Tenorio and other bicycle shop owners should understand that bike-share will help their bottom line by boosting sales of helmets and other cycling gear, and by improving safety and encouraging urban cycling, which will make more folks want to buy their own bikes. Hopefully the Divvy folks will reach out to Tenorio and he’ll come around to supporting bike-share, but his initial resistance has probably cost him a few customers.

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Large, green icons represent the 75 stations in Phase 1. View in a larger map.

Chicagoans can sign up for “founding” Divvy bike sharing memberships at two levels starting today at noon. Only 4,000 founding level memberships will be available. The “Pedal” founding membership, for $75, includes a limited edition “Founding Member” black key (regular members’ keys will be Divvy blue). A commercial was published this morning that advertises Divvy and the founding member black key.

The  ”Gear” founding membership, for $125, comes with these perks:

• The same limited edition “Founding Member” black key
• Five 24-hour passes to share with friends and family (a $35 value)
• A black Divvy t-shirt in any size
• Entrance into lottery to participate in official launch at the Bike to Work Week Rally on Friday, June 14

Divvy published a bike sharing station location map on its website. Our map shows the different phasing, listed below:

• Phase 1: 75 stations, 1,413 docks, average of 18 docks per station, June 14, 2013
• Phase 2: 100, by June – August
• Phase 3: 64, by June – August
• Phase 4: 54, by June – August
• Phase 5: 87 (380 stations total, but 400 stations will eventually be installed), by June 2014

The city has not yet released the capacity of all the planned docking stations. Phase 1 includes a handful of stations outside of downtown. The stations farthest from the Loop include the Damen Blue Line station, 18th and Racine in Pilsen (next to Irv’s Bike Shop), McCormick Place, the Diversey Brown Line station, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, and Metra’s Clybourn Station (the Metra station with the highest number of reported bike thefts). The largest Phase 1 station will be at Union Station at Canal Street and Jackson Boulevard with 35 docks.

Cartographers can design their own maps with the data in our Fusion Table, or the JSON data straight from the Divvy website.

Streetsblog contributor Kevin Zolkiewicz tries out a Divvy bike at Sunday's Bike the Drive.

Bike rush hour on Milwaukee, torn up for repaving before the installation of protected bike lanes. Photo by John Greenfield.

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

Trust me, my friends, this is the year sustainable transportation blows up in Chicago. Say what you want about Rahm Emanuel’s record on education, crime and privatization. But since he took office in early 2011, joined by forward-thinking Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein and shrewd CTA President Forrest Claypool, the city has embarked on a number of bold projects to encourage walking, biking and transit use. I promise the next three months are going to be a tipping point as we make the move from the car-centric status quo to becoming a healthier, more efficient and more vibrant city.

Where to start? The elephant in the room is the south Red Line shutdown, or rehab, depending on whether you see the glass as half empty or half full. Launched on Sunday, May 19, this $425 million project has closed the entire line south of Roosevelt for an extreme makeover, featuring the elimination of slow zones through track replacement, plus station enhancements.

It’s true the work is forcing South Siders to dramatically alter their commutes for the next five months, but the alternative to a complete closure would have been four more years of weekend work and $75 million in additional costs. The CTA appears to have done a solid job of getting the word out about the overhaul, and is getting good reviews from customers for providing numerous alternatives, like free shuttle buses to and train rides from the Green Line’s Garfield stop. In October riders will be rewarded for their patience with a twenty-minute-faster roundtrip from 95th Street to the Loop.

CTA rendering of the new Red Wilson station.

The South Side will also be getting a new ‘L’ station with the $50 million Cermak Green Line stop, a stone’s throw from McCormick Place, slated for June construction. And, starting this summer, the Wilson Red Line station, often cited as the system’s most disgusting facility, will undergo a complete reconstruction that will transform it into a transfer point between Red and Purple Express service, albeit at a jaw-dropping $203 million price tag.

The transit authority recently announced plans for high-speed bus rapid transit service on Ashland between 95^th and Irving Park, as well as a central Loop corridor between Union Station and Navy Pier. There’s sure to be plenty of backlash as they move forward with these groundbreaking plans, since they will involve replacing car lanes with dedicated bus lanes. This summer the Chicago Architecture Foundation will announce the winner of a contest to design the BRT stations. Hopefully the winning entry will be as iconic as the futuristic, tubular bus stops of Curitiba, Brazil.

One summer transit initiative I’m less excited about is the debut of the Ventra payment system. While it should cause no problems for the majority of Chicagoans, I’m worried about the impact on low-income residents, since cash fare for ‘L’ rides will spike from $2.25 to $3. You can avoid this increase by buying a reusable fare card for $5, which is refunded to you as a transit credit if you register it within ninety days, but this requires having a five-spot in your hand, plus access to a phone, the Internet, or the CTA headquarters. Plus, when you register, you’ll be given the option of activating the card as a prepaid debit card with numerous hidden fees, a temptation that many unbanked folks can ill afford. Fortunately, last week the agency announced plans to roll back some of these fees.

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Testing out Divvy.

Divvy bike-share bicycles were on display at yesterday’s Bike the Drive post-ride festival in Grant Park, giving the public its first peek at the blue bikes which just arrived in town on Saturday. I took a spin around the block with Scott Kubly, deputy commissioner at the Chicago Department of Transportation. This was my first time riding a bike manufactured by the BIXI company. They’re available in Toronto (where Anne Alt reviewed her experience), Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Montreal, and Boston. The bikes are good-looking, sturdy, and comfortable. They weigh about 45 pounds, which is 20 pounds less than my daily Dutch cargo cycle.

Active Transportation Alliance Deputy Director Melody Geraci gives her approval.

Registration for annual memberships opens this week. The cost for unlimited 30-minute trips is $75 per year or $7 a day. Founding memberships, which will include perks-to-be-named-later, will be $125. Divvy staff were giving away $10 off coupons for the annual pass. Let us know how you plan to use Divvy in the comments section – the most interesting response will win a coupon.

Kubly, myself, and graphic designer Nick Adam (who collaborated on the Divvy branding for Firebelly Design). Photo: Mark Wagenbuur.

Here’s a tip for local bicycle shop owners: start advertising bikes you sell with similar features as the Divvy cycles. These bikes are very user-friendly since they’re equipped with all the necessary accessories for urban riding: lights, fenders, chain guard, and gears and brakes located within the hubs. Bike-share systems have been shown to influence their members to start using their own bikes more, or to buy a bike if they don’t already own one. After using Divvy, people will be coming to your shop looking to purchase a similar ride.

Looking north at Milwaukee/Chicago/Ogden, Chicago's worst intersection for bike crashes, now covered with silky-smooth pavement. Photo by John Greenfield.

The Chicago Department of Transportation’s Milwaukee Avenue protected bike lane project, which will connect existing PBLs on Kinzie and Elston is rolling along at a rapid pace. Yesterday white thermoplastic stripes were visible in the central section of the project, which is not being repaved. After riding the street this afternoon, I’m pleased to report that the north and south sections of the strip, which have been an obstacle course of rough pavement and exposed manhole covers since repaving started last week, are now covered with a smooth layer of asphalt, and even some pavement markings. More striping has been added to the central section as well, so the bikeway design is starting to come into focus.

Steven Vance and I are especially looking forward to seeing the effects of new pavement markings, including dashed bike lanes, bike boxes and high-visibility, zebra-striped crosswalks, on bike, pedestrian and motorist safety at the Milwaukee/Chicago/Ogden intersection, which currently has the highest bike crash rate in the city. These treatments will likely be completed this weekend, and we expect the new design will immediately make this confusing intersection safer and less chaotic. We look forward to seeing the bike crash rate drop here in the future, even as the number of cyclists on skyrockets. Here’s a quick tour of current conditions on Milwaukee.

Looking southeast at Milwaukee and Carpenter. Buses will merge into PBL. Photo by John Greenfield.

Looking northwest at Milwaukee/Grand/Halsted. To the business owner at last month's community meeting who insisted a dedicated right-turn lane is needed for cars here, despite CDOT traffic counts indicating the opposite: sorry, but cyclists are getting a bike box instead. Photo by John Greenfield.

Looking southeast towards Milwaukee/Kinzie/Desplaines. The turn lane for bikes heading east onto Kinzie will now start further up Milwaukee. Photo by John Greenfield.

Looking southeast at Milwaukee/Ogden - a buffered lane is already rideable. Photo by John Greenfield.

It was quite a surprise to come upon fresh white thermoplastic stripes on Milwaukee Avenue Thursday evening. Many Chicagoans have been eagerly anticipating new protected bike lanes on Milwaukee, the city’s busiest bike street, which will be the missing link between existing PBLs on Kinzie and Elston. At a public meeting about the bike lanes at Intuit arts center on April 30, Chicago Department of Transportation staff said this stretch of Milwaukee would be repaved in May and the lanes constructed in June, pending continuing community outreach and final approval. At that meeting, a vocal minority of local business owners and residents complained about CDOT’s proposal to relocate about half of the street’s curbside parking spaces to side streets, as well as other details of the plan that they feared would make it harder to drive.

Last week crews began tearing up sections at the north and south ends of the project site for repaving. CDOT Spokesman Pete Scales said the department hopes to finish this work by this Monday. I recently noticed a few patches in the middle of this section had been recently patched, which seemed odd, since I was under the impression CDOT would be redoing the entire stretch. The new striping on this section indicates that this middle segment will not be completely repaved – no biggie, since the asphalt here is reasonably smooth. More importantly, new striping suggests that the PBL plan is now a done deal, and we can look forward to seeing the finished product sooner than later. We’ll get you more details on the status of the project soon; here’s a quick tour of what’s on the ground so far.

West side of Milwaukee south of Ogden. Photo by John Greenfield.

Continuing south on Milwaukee - a floating parking lane. Photo by John Greenfield.

Continuing south on Milwaukee. Photo by John Greenfield.

A contractor measures the street width on a section of Milwaukee north of Grand that is already partially repaved. Photo by John Greenfield.