Confession: For the last ten days, while reporting on the Dickens Avenue Neighborhood Greenway issue, I've felt like a voice in the wilderness of the local media landscape. On October 7, I started writing about Ald. Timmy Knudsen and the Chicago Department of Transportation following through with their plan, announced in mid-September, to remove the traffic diverter / plaza at Dickens and Lincoln Park West.
In two different articles since then, I've highlighted the folly of the authorities pandering to grumpy motorists by once again allowing westbound "cut-through" traffic on Dickens, making the corridor less safe for vulnerable road users. I pointed out the unfairness of the fact that, after 4.5 years of public meetings and advocacy by residents to get the bike-pedestrian-priority corridor built, it only took nine months of behind-the-scenes griping by drivers to get it partly dismantled. I noted that the authorities seemed to ignore the fact Chicago, Bike Grid Now held a protest against the decision last month that drew some 150 participants, and the "Save Dickens Landing" campaign sent almost 3,500 letters to decision-makers.
In the process, I spent lots of time sending emails to the powers-that-me, interviewing advocates, hanging out at the plaza, snapping photos, and talking with the contractors and passers-by.
Meanwhile, over at the other local news outlets? Crickets.
Thankfully, that silence ended today, thanks to Chicago Tribune transportation reporter Sarah Freishtat. As I've noted in the past, she did fine reporting on the backlash against the Dickens Greenway when the route was completed last January. Her article that was published this morning also does a good job with this somewhat complex subject.
It's a fairly balanced take on the issue. Yes, Ald. Knudsen and CDOT are given the opportunity to try to justify their undemocratic actions, and a nearby neighbor who opposed the plaza also gets some airtime. But Freishtat also gave Active Transportation Alliance Managing Director of Advocacy Jim Merrell a chance to speak truth to power.
"We back down to whatever community pressure, people not adapting to what is honestly a very minor change in the traffic pattern, leading to deadly consequences," Merrell told Freishtat. "It’s continuing to prioritize driver convenience over the safety of everyone on the roadway."
Also in the Tribune this morning, there was a great letter to the editor by Lincoln Park bike dad Zach Welden titled, "Chicago is seeing a growth in cycling. Removing the Dickens Greenway Plaza hurts that progress." He also sums up the traffic diverter removal situation nicely. "Unfortunately, no effort was made to first attempt reasonable solutions such as better signage or road markings, nor to seek the input of easily reachable 43rd Ward cycling advocates known to Knudsen’s office," he wrote. "Instead, his office’s default reaction was to cave to not-in-my-backyard opposition and in doing so fundamentally degrade one of the few pleasant neighborhood greenways in the city."
Believe it or not, I've also got something new to say about this topic today. Immediately after I learned in mid-September that the traffic diverter / plaza was slated for removal, I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to CDOT, asking for emails related to the project from the previous month. My goal was to get more info about how and why this dubious decision was made. Yesterday, October 16, almost a month later, and well after the car-free space was eliminated, I finally got the completed response from the transportation department. It shed a bit of light on what happened behind the scenes before the removal was announced on September 16.
On September 4, CDOT Complete Streets Director David Smith sent CDOT intergovernmental affairs specialist and menu program liaison Leonard Aluise the new designs for the plaza location. (Discretionary ward "menu money" is the $1.5 million each ward gets annually from the City coffers for infrastructure projects.) These created a new protected lane for eastbound bike and e-scooter traffic, but forced sustainable transportation devices users to share a single narrow lane with car drivers, a dangerous layout.
Here's the design showing the removal of the existing westbound bike lane and northern half of the plaza, as well as eastbound "sharrow" shared-lane markings, in red.
And here's the design showing the future layout of Dickens east of the plaza location, with the new eastbound protected bike lane to north-south Stockton Drive, but no westbound bike lane, just sharrows.
Smith also provided a list of expenses for the project, which Ald. Knudsen would pay for out of his ward's menu funds. While the 1.4-mile Dickens Greenway cost about $1 million, paid for with Divvy bike-share revenue, i.e. by bicycle riders, eliminating the plaza would cost $27,504.91 in taxpayer money.
Interestingly, on October 8, a CDOT spokesperson told Streetsblog, "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." Today's Tribune article also put that number at around $27,000.
Now, the letter that came with CDOT's response to Streetsblog's FOIA reply included the following caveat. "CDOT... redacted preliminary discussions regarding project financing between CDOT and the alderman’s office as deliberative pursuant to 5 ILCS 140/7(1)(f) Preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, memoranda, and other records in which opinions are expressed, or policies or actions are formulated, exempt that a specific record or relevant portion of a record shall not be exempt when the record is publicly cited and identified by the head of the public body... These preliminary discussions are deliberative and exempt from production pursuant to Ş7(1)(f) and have been properly withheld under the FOIA."
Translation: The FOIA response likely blacked out some of the juicier content in some of these emails, that may have revealed some smoking guns. For example, here's the September 9 response to Aluise from 43rd Ward Director of Infrastructure and Constituent Services Maggie (Sullivan) Walsh. (I blurred out the email addresses as a courtesy.)
Got any ideas what Ald. Tunney's staffer said here? Me neither. But, in case you're wondering, I'm pretty sure the subject line "Dickenson" is a major typo, not a slightly misspelled reference to the American poet, or the lead singer of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden.
And, also thanks to the magic of redaction (CDOT's FOIA officer must spend a fortune on black digital ink) I also have absolutely no idea what CDOT Assistant Commissioner for Intergovernmental Affairs Bill Higgins said to Aluise in this September 11 email.
That is to say, the FOIA response giveth, and the FOIA response taketh away. But don't worry, as soon as I realized that this mid-August to mid-September material was largely eclipsed by redaction, I immediately submitted another request for mid-July to mid-August emails. Hopefully the non-blacked-out content of that summer correspondence will be hotter. Who knows, maybe they'll reveal an (Oliver) twist in the Dickens saga.
Read the Chicago Tribune article about the Dickens issue here.
Read Zach Welden's letter to the Tribune.
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