I'm sure that by now some Streetsblog Chicago readers feel that Ronald Roenigk, editor of the Not In My Back Yard-style newspaper chain Inside Publications, has gotten more than enough airtime on SBC this autumn. Here are a couple of our recent posts:
Those readers aren't wrong. But, sorry, Roenigk's third screed against the Granville Avenue safe streets proposal, "Global call for safetyism hits home as aggravationism," is so absurd, I simply can't restrain myself from skewering it. But I'll try to keep things relatively brief.
If you're not familiar with what's proposed on Granville Avenue (6200 N.), you can get up to speed with this article. Here's the elevator speech. The Chicago Department of Transportation is responding to the heavy traffic, dangerous speeding, and high crash rate on a roughly three-mile, two-way stretch of Granville between Kedzie Avenue (3200 W.) and Sheridan Road (1000 W.) While it's a residential street located halfway between the Devon Avenue (6400 N.) and Peterson Avenue (6000 N.) arterial roadways, motorists use Granville as a long-distance "cut-through" route in an effort to avoid congestion. To stop drivers from treating the residential street like a highway, CDOT proposes adding one-way stretches for motorists, traffic calming infrastructure, and "contraflow" lanes to make two-way bike and e-scooter riding safe and legal.
Ronald Roenigk writes his articles for Inside Publications from a strictly-windshield POV, so he's dead-set against any street design changes that might make driving slightly less convenient. Here are his two previous rants against the Granville proposal that ran in the News-Star paper, which covers the Edgewater neighborhood, plus the new broadside:
• "Neighbors Rally to stop Granville Greenway"
• "Full house turns out for CDOT pitch for changes on Granville: It's full speed ahead in jamming up traffic." (There's no byline, but Roenigk told SBC he wrote it.)
• "Global call for safetyism hits home as aggravationism"
Like I said, I don't want to get too far into the weeds analyzing Roenigk's latest long litany of complaints about the project. But suffice to say, he renames "Vision Zero," the worldwide effort to eliminate all serious and fatal traffic crashes, as "safetyism." He previously defined safetyism as, "a culture or belief system in which alleged safety has become a sacred value, which means that people or public officials are unwilling to make any tradeoffs."
Roenigk references successful campaigns to make streets safer and more sustainable in Chicago's peer cities, such as Paris, which has roughly the same population. He writes that this global movement is having an insidious influence on "innocent, normal people who drive cars," as The Onion would joke. "Chicago's urban planners and policy makers have started to enforce... [United Nations, World Economic Forum, and World Health Organization recommendation to prevent crashes and climate change]," he writes.
Cutting to the chase, here's the single-most laughable passage from the new News-Star article, Roenigk's argument for why Granville must remain available for long-distance crosstown trips.
Anyone with a basic grasp of Far North Side geography could think about this passage for a minute and understand why it's ludicrous. I actually agree with Roenigk that it's reasonable "for arterial streets to be located every half mile," which is the general rule in Chicago. However, he argues that "Peterson [6000 N.] and Devon [6400 N.] avenues... are a mile apart," so it makes sense for Granville [6200 N.] to be used as a main street because it's located half a mile from both Peterson and Devon.
Ronald Roenigk, my brother in Chicago journalism, everybody who has lived in our city for more than a year should know there are generally eight standard blocks to the mile here, and the streets are numbered accordingly. Therefore Granville is two standard blocks, or a quarter of a mile, from both Peterson and Devon, not a half mile from them, as erroneously stated. So while it's true that "Granville has become a de facto arterial street," since it's only two blocks from Peterson and Devon, actual designated main streets, it shouldn't be one.
What makes this situation even more bizarre is that Roenigk's place of business, the Inside Publications office, is located just north of Granville. How the heck did he not know that Devon and Peterson, the next two major east-west streets north and south, are each only about a five-minute walk from his office, not a ten-minute stroll? Oh right, maybe he drives everywhere.
Last January, when I called Roenigk to let him know there was a factual mistake in his coverage of Lincoln Park's new Dickens Avenue Greenway, and politely suggested that he correct it, he hung up on me. However, to his credit, during our two recent phone conversations about Granville he's been fired-up, but relatively civil, with no slammed receivers. (This is the 2020s after all.)
This time, Roenigk told me that two or three other people had already notified him that his Chicago geography was scrambled. "I will correct the statement," he promised.
So Roegnik admitted his claim, that "proper urban planning" dictates that Granville should exist as an arterial because it's a half-mile from other main streets, was factually wrong. But, farcically, he insisted to me that his error didn't undermine his argument that the avenue must remain a cut-through.
This situation reminds me of what former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's press secretary famously told reporters, "Don’t say what he said. Print what he meant."
Here's one more thing I'll say about Roenigk's hilarious new article. It discusses an October 21 EON-NEON Block Club meeting in Edgewater, where two different men who identified themselves as firefighters exchanged different viewpoints on the Granville proposal. One claimed the changes would delay first responders, while the other noted that similar traffic calming strategies in the neighborhood haven't caused any problems.
Once again for the folks in back, I'm really tired of having to debunk bogus claims that Completes Streets infrastructure projects cause major issues for firetruck, ambulance, and squad car drivers. But the fact is that they don't.
As I said, despite all the back and forth, Ronald Roenigk and I are on reasonably good terms nowadays. So I'm going to assume that he'll be amused, not annoyed, by this Halloween costume I was able to pick up at a discount today, on November 1.
And, heck, if Roenigk is able to locate a "Sustainable Transportation News and Advocacy Website Editor" outfit, I won't raise a fuss.
Read the News-Star article "Global call for safetyism hits home as aggravationism" here.
Read Streetsblog's writeup of the October 15 Granville public meeting here.
Visit the main website for Granville Avenue Complete Streets here.
Check out images from the October 15 presentation here.
Look at more open house posters here.
See images of the street network here.
Check out the corridor plot here.
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