Read the entire News-Booster article here.
Read about the public community meeting on the Granville Greenway on October 15 here.
Update 10/3/24, 3:30 PM: Streetsblog asked the Chicago Department of Transportation and the 40th, 48th, and 50th wards exactly what east-west parameters are proposed for the Granville Greenway. (The News-Booster report said "from Kedzie [Avenue, 3200 W.] to the lake [about 930 W.]," but they're not exactly a reliable source.) Here's what we got from the authorities.
"For the 48th Ward, we're discussing traffic calming along the entire stretch of Granville in our Ward (Clark [Street, 1600 W.] to Sheridan [Road, 1000 W.])," said chief of staff Nicole Granacki. "However, traffic calming measures and a greenway are obviously not the same thing, and there's an important distinction here when you look at the eastern end of Granville. We have bike lanes on Kenmore [Avenue, 1030 W.] and Winthrop [Avenue, 1100 W.] that lead to the Lakefront Trail and we are working with CDOT on signage and paint directing cyclists to these routes so that they don't end up on Sheridan Road."
In this part of town, Sheridan is a high-speed four lane "stroad," essentially an extension of DuSable Lake Shore Drive, where it's dangerous to bike in the street. So until the City solves that problem, it makes sense to encourage bike riders to use Kenmore (northbound) and Winthrop (southbound), side streets with striped bike lanes, as safer alternatives.
"To the best of my knowledge, we're only looking at Sheridan to Western [Avenue, 2400 W.]," said 40th Ward Director of Communication and Development Alison Murphy. "We won't be discussing anything west of Western at the [October 15 community] meeting."
Yesterday I noted that my own interactions with real estate professional, West Town resident, Augusta Boulevard protected lanes skeptic, and recent bike education program donor A. J. Manaseer were generally cordial. So much so that I wrote that the experience "made me rethink my occasional 'take-no-prisoners' approach to debunking bikeway opponents."
So in the future I plan to take a somewhat more charitable attitude towards Chicagoans who might be agnostic about the value of proposed Complete Streets projects to improve bike and pedestrian safety. Just because they haven't yet come around to sustainable transportation advocates' way of thinking, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're foolish people.
But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater here. Some people who use their influence to broadcast misleading, or downright erroneous, claims about Safe Streets projects, and do so without remorse, deserve to be spanked.
That brings us to Inside Publications editor Ronald Roenigk ("ROW-nick"). I wouldn't just label this guy Chicago's de-facto king of the Not In My Back Yard set. More than that, he controls a whole mini empire of free NIMBY newspapers covering downtown and North Side neighborhoods from the Loop to Rogers Park. They're basically the anti-Streetsblog, opposing everything from making roadways safer for people walking and biking; to building dense, affordable, transit-friendly housing.
But what's most annoying about the way Roenigk does business is that, even when he's informed that he got his facts wrong, he may refuse to make things right. Last January, he published a screed against the new Dickens Avenue Nighborhood Greenway, a side street bike-pedestrian-priority corridor in Lincoln Park. He incorrectly reported that the project was paid for by "Chicago taxpayer funds."
I called Roenigk on the phone and told him, reasonably politely I thought, that the project was actually funded by payments to the City of Chicago from Lyft, the Divvy bike-share concessionaire, not tax money. "We're standing by our [factually incorrect] story," he said, before hanging up the phone.
But there's one positive (?) thing I can say about Roenigk. If it wasn't for his yellow journalism, I might not heard as quickly about about his latest bête noire. That's the Granville Avenue Neighborhood Greenway (6200 N.) proposal in the West Ridge and Edgewater communities.
I learned about Roenigk's rant from Streetsblog reader John Casey, who sent me some screenshots. The editor's dubious intent is clear from the first sentence, which states that Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth is "at odds with her ward over a new bike greenway." So all roughly 50,000 of the alder's constituents are opposed to the proposal to make Granville a safer and more pleasant place to walk, bike, and live? Please.
But let's look at what ideas are actually being floated for Granville, according to City officials. "[The Chicago Department of Transportation] has been working closely with the 48th, 40th, and 50th wards, along with other community stakeholders, on a plan to enhance traffic safety along the Granville corridor," said CDOT spokesperson Erica Schroeder. "A public community meeting will be held on October 15 to discuss the proposed improvements." Here's a flier for the hearing.
40th Ward Ald. Andre Vasquez's Director of Communication and Development Alison Murphy disagreed with Roenigk's characterization of the project as a "bike greenway." "There will be a proposed bike lane as part of the proposal, but the larger point of the project is traffic safety and traffic calming," Murphy said. "Neighbors in the area have complained to us for years now that Granville is being used as an arterial street, instead of a residential street—we've heard consistent issues of [drivers] blowing through stop signs and speeding, and the difficulty of pedestrians crossing safely."
"CDOT's study of the street aligns with the neighbors' experience," Murphy added. "According to their data, Granville has three times the traffic volume of a normal residential street, and is in the top 10 percent of crashes of all residential streets in the entire city of Chicago. Many sections of [Granville] are in the top 5 percent or even 1 percent, and [motorists] have been clocked regularly going over 50 mph," That's a scary speed, especially on a side street that passes by schools and parks with heavy foot traffic.
Murphy said that at next month's hearing, CDOT staffers will present their findings on traffic conditions on the avenue, and discuss their proposed traffic calming ideas. If they're anything like what was done other greenways like Dickens, they could include speed humps to deter speeding, sidewalk extensions to shorten crossing distances, and raised crosswalks.
"We're eager to hear feedback from neighbors," Murphy said. "We share the concern of making sure that traffic doesn't get re-routed onto other residential streets, so those are issues we are actively working to identify with CDOT so they can incorporate that feedback into their design."
Ald. Manaa-Hoppenworth's statement to Streetsblog included similar info. "With a large number of both schools and older adults in the area, protecting our students and seniors is paramount," she said.
Wednesday evening I biked the 1.8-mile stretch of the possible Granville corridor between Western Avenue (2400 W.) and Sheridan Road (1000 W.) and shot video of the trip. My journey started in West Ridge, two blocks south of the Devon Avenue (6400 N.) South Asian shopping and dining district, and ended at the shoreline near Loyola University. As you might expect, I crossed paths with a diverse array of people riding bikes and scooters.
But as the data suggested, I also encountered many drivers using Granville as a "cut-though route" to avoid congestion on Devon and Peterson Avenue (6000 N.), the arterial streets they're supposed to be using. Some of them were traveling at unsafe speeds. It was obvious that traffic calming, and other strategies to discourage people from using this side street like a highway, are badly needed.
At the risk of making your blood boil, let's now take a closer look at Roenigk's strictly windshield-POV take on the Granville issue. The whole article is full of inflammatory statements, and claims that are at-best half truths, so I won't bother doing a deep-dive, but I'll discuss a few of the more absurd arguments.
First, note that the News-Star piece is extreme case of thinking locally and acting globally. The Inside-Booster office is located on the 6200 N. block of Clark Street (1600 W. here) in Edgewater, just north of Granville Avenue. So Roenigk seems to be taking it very personally that Granville may become slightly less convenient for him to drive on.
If fairness, as you can see from the selfie I took Wednesday, I really can't claim to have much knowledge of Edgewater myself. So I confess that I'm a little out of my depth when talking about this neighborhood.
Just kidding, for the last decade I've lived in Uptown, the next community area to the south of Edgewater. I'm only about a mile from Foster Avenue, the street that separates these two communities, aka the (somewhat inaccurately nicknamed) "Injera / Pho Divide."
Another reason why Roenigk is especially negative about sustainable transportation nowadays is that the Clark Street concrete-protected lanes in Edgewater – which created better conditions for walking, biking, and transit – involved converting a few curbside car parking spots in front of his workplace. Sure, when driving to work, he could simply park his car on the other side of Clark. But seeing as how a long passage of his Granville article talks about Clark, it's obvious he feels deeply insulted by the street redesign that eliminated his own rock star parking.
If you don't mind, let's examines Roenigk's seven-paragraph temper tantrum about Clark that takes up about a quarter of his Granville piece. He justifies this journalistic boondoggle by claiming it proves that the Granville Greenway will cause problems.
As he did his Dickensian novel, Roenigk refers to the Clark protected lanes as "privileged bike lanes" because motorists aren't supposed to drive or park in them. Never mind that e-scooter and skateboard riders are also permitted to ride in protected lanes. And using his logic, maybe we should start calling local expressways and DuSable Lake Shore Drive "privileged driver lanes," because it's illegal to operate a bicycle, scooter, etc. there.
"In Edgewater, small businesses along Clark Street are being hurt due to the privileged bike lane [concrete] barriers that have eliminated customer parking," Roenick gripes. He doesn't mention that the pizzeria Inside Publications shares a building with, old-school George's Deep Dish, benefits from dedicated curbside parking that CDOT set aside for them, around the corner on Thome Avenue.
Still, one might ask, "Even if it's not true that protected lanes scare away customers who drive, they don't actually attract other patrons, do they?" Well, starting around 6 p.m. Wednesday evening, within 15 minutes I photographed ten bike and scooter riders passing by the Insider Publications office and the pizza parlor.
Those additional people rolling past local businesses are certainly nothing to sneeze at. That's especially true since, unlike drivers on Clark even before the street remix, if cyclists and scooteristas see a shop or restaurant they want to spend money at, they have a nearly 100-percent chance of finding a legal place to leave their vehicle.
And, predictably, Roenick trots out the tired warhorse that protected bike lanes delay first responders. I really don't feel like debunking this spurious argument for the umpteenth time, but they don't.
All right, this article is getting almost as long as Roenigk's! So I'll just end with a few more of his sillier, and/or misleading, statements about Granville.
• Roenigk: "[Ald. Manaa-Hoppenworth] and CDOT [are holding negotiations] to allow a new greenway to metastasize [spread or grow like a cancer.]"
• Roenigk: "Under a greenway... two-way bike travel [is sometimes added] on these streets." All of Granville between the north branch of the Chicago River and the lake is currently two-way, so this statement is irrelevant to his article.
• Marjorie Fritz-Birch, an Edgewater community leaders who told Roenigk she's "very much opposed" to the Granville Greenway, also said, "I'm a bike rider." That's a very common anti-bikeway trope.
So if you're in favor of the Granville Greenway, be sure to show up for the October 15 hearing to voice support, especially if you live in the 40th, 48th, or 50th wards. Let your alderperson know that if they support this project, contrary to what Roenigk "reported," not all of their 50,000-some constituents will be "at odds [with them] over a new bike greenway."
Read the entire News-Booster article here.
Read about the public community meeting on the Granville Greenway on October 15 here.
Update 9/27/24, 3 PM: As discussed above, Ronald Roenigk's News-Booster "article" is particularly harsh on Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th). He not only makes the laughable statement that her entire constituency is "at odds" with the Granville Greenway proposal. He also attacks her positions on retail, and dense, affordable, transit-oriented development on Broadway in the ward.
After reading this article, a local sustainable transportation advocate emailed Ald. Manaa-Hoppenworth's office a "stay strong!" pep talk, urging the alder to support this project to make walking and biking safer and more enjoyable. He gave Streetsblog permission to publish his message, which makes a few other good points about the current Granville brouhaha.
"Hey 48th Ward Team," the resident wrote. "I've already reached out to voice my support for the Granville Greenway idea, but I just saw an article from Streetsblog that I'm hoping y'all will read if you haven't already. [The advocate shared a link to this story.]"
"The article focuses on a particular 'journalist' [Ronald Roenigk] who is leading the anti-Greenway argument, and it debunks many of his claims. It also highlights many of the reasons why CDOT is considering this change, which
I'm sure you're well aware of," the resident added. "PLEASE familiarize yourself with the poor quality, bad-faith, and often outright factually incorrect arguments being made by the car-brained opposition to safe streets, and PLEASE understand the sensible and facts-based counters to those faulty points."
"Finally, on the matter of the political strategy implications, PLEASE LENI, DO NOT GIVE IN TO THESE PEOPLE," the advocate exhorted. "They are going to make all sorts of threats about how they won't vote for your re-election. I'm sorry to make this point, but these people are very highly likely not voting for you whether you build a greenway or not. They are spiteful, anti-social people who only interact with the rest of the ward from behind a windshield and will whip themselves up into a rage at the slightest inconvenience. PLEASE prioritize safe streets for Edgewater."
"The safety of everyone who lives in and moves through the ward is much more important than coddling the chronic road-ragers," the resident concluded. "Build the Granville Greenway! Build raised crosswalks! Build bump-outs! Keep with it, and the benefits to our ward will speak for thesmelves."
Well said. I think the biggest takeaway here is that progressive politicians shouldn't worry that if they endorse Complete Streets projects, they will put themselves in danger of losing support from motorheads. Those folks probably wouldn't vote for them anyway.
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