If you're a longtime Chicagoan, you probably remember back in 2003 when then-Mayor Richard M. Daley eliminated the Miegs Field airport, bulldozing the runways without warning. (That was actually a good thing – a facility that previously served mostly affluent people and politicians is now Northerly Island, with a beautiful green space and a music venue.)
Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but recently something similar happened to the beloved Dickens Greenway plaza at east end of the 1.4-mile bike-and-pedestrian-priority side street route, at Dickens Avenue and Lincoln Park West. With little warning, it appears a Chicago Department of Transportation crew scraped out about half the green and tan paint on the road, and removed many of the flexible plastic posts that helped keep drivers out of the space.
According to CDOT, the Dickens Greenway, including the plaza, were funded by about $1 million in Divvy bike-share revenue, i.e. by bicycle riders. The department has not yet answered the question of how much this removal will cost, and who is footing the bill.
Update 10/8/24, 1:45 PM: CDOT tells us, "The [removal of the Dickens Greenway plaza and redesign of the intersection] is being funded by the 43rd Ward’s aldermanic menu budget and costs an estimated $25,000." Your tax dollars at work!
Unless local Alderperson Timmy Knudsen (43rd) can be convinced that this is a terrible decision, it won't be long until the space is once again open to "cut-through" traffic. That's drivers using a residential street as a short cut in an effort to avoid motorist-generated traffic jams on the main streets they're supposed to use.
When the greenway plaza debuted last January, some people with a strictly windshield point of view were angry. The plaza meant that when drivers exited DuSable Lake Shore Drive via La Salle Drive, they could no longer avoid Clark by taking Stockton Drive north through the Lincoln Park green space and then heading west on Dickens. Once the plaza is completely gone, they'll be able to drive that way once again.
Editor Ronald Roenigk of the Inside Publications anti-sustainable transportation newspaper chain expressed this car-centric POV in a rant against the Dickens Greenway last January. "Crafty North Side drivers have long enjoyed the pleasant views and time saved by turning north on Stockton Drive off La Salle Drive, passing by the Farm in the Zoo and Green City Market to Dickens Avenue, then heading West on Dickens into Lincoln Park, thereby avoiding the usual traffic backups on Clark Street."
However, tragically, the dangers of drivers using roads through parkland as highways were laid bare in May 2006, very close to this plaza. That's when four-year-old Maya Hirsch was walking with her family from the Lincoln Park Zoo on Belden Avenue, just two blocks north of Dickens. As they crossed Lincoln Park West, a motorist failed to yield, fatally striking the girl.
Scrapping Dickens plaza will enable cut-through driving across Lincoln Park once again. It will also make the Dickens Greenway west of the green space less safe and pleasant to ride and walk on, because there will be more car traffic. It also sets an awful precent, because it means that even if a street redesign is helpful for reducing the chances of serious and fatal crashes, it can be reversed if enough Not In My Back Yard types raise a fuss.
Ald. Knudsen's office told us (see the full statement here) that he decided to remove the plaza due to complaints that the redesign was "inconvenient and confusing." Sure, not being able to use the Dickens as a shortcut may have made aggressive drivers' trips slightly less speedy, but any confusion could have addressed with additional signage.
But what's particularly frustrating is this explanation from the ward. "We received this community feedback in several ways – in-person at the site, in-person at building meetings on the topic, in-person at our office, virtually by email and virtually by telephone," they said.
In other words, while it took only 4.5 years of public hearings and advocacy to get the Dickens Greenway built in the face of next-level NIMBY-ism, there were no public meeting on whether or not it should be watered down. Last month the ward and CDOT indicated that the plaza removal decision was a done deal. But it's important to remember that safety on Dickens impacts not just Ald. Knudsen's constituents, but also Chicagoans who regularly use the route for their commutes.
One person who fits into both those categories is Molly Lamping Fleck, a bike mom and cycling advocate who lives in the Lincoln Park community. She recently joined Chicago, Bike Grid Now! cofounder Rony Islam and myself on the Bike Talk podcast (listen here at 22:55) to discuss the controversy.
"There are all kinds of people out there using this greenway," said Lamping Fleck on the show. "Lincoln Park is an affluent neighborhood and often a small group of people who like to drive everywhere in our neighborhood will use that to be very loud and vocal about it. But 32 percent of people that live in Lincoln Park are car-free. The neighborhood has an average Walk Score of 94. There's three different 'L' lines, there's 12 different bus routes, there are over two dozen Divvy stations. This is a neighborhood that is really a pedestrian neighborhood. And so... something that I'm trying to do is organize my neighbors to show up to these community meetings and say that people who live here want this."
Again, while there were lots of public meetings before the greenway was implemented, there were none before diluting it. But, encouragingly, only two days after Ald. Knudsen announced the plaza removal plan, Chicago, Bike Grid Now! drew roughly 150 riders to a "Bike Jam" protest ending at Dickens/Stockton. And within about three weeks, 3,425 letters have been sent to decision-makers through the group's "Save Dickens Landing" campaign.
Meanwhile, in mid-September, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to CDOT for emails about Dickens, to try to find out exactly what was going on behind the scenes that led to this anti-Complete Streets decision. The department is late in replying, and didn't respond to a follow-up email I sent this morning. Perhaps it's no coincidence that at the end of the day, I heard from a reader that the removal was already underway. At any rate, if I don't hear from CDOT soon about this, it may be time to check in with the Illinois Attorney General's Office in order to speed things up
At any rate it was disheartening this evening to see that drivers are already starting to violate the plaza. Here's hoping that bike advocates and Lincoln Parkers can make enough noise to turn things around.
Listen to the Bike Talk podcast episode here.
Update 10/8/24, 12:30 PM: We just got this response to our FOIA request from CDOT.
As stated in the above tweet, it's time to go Back to the Drawing Board with a modified FOIA request. Stay tuned...
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