Yesterday, Block Club Chicago's Alex V. Hernandez reported that the 4700 block Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Square community would be opened for car-free use starting Monday, for the next week. That's being done to accommodate construction work on Leland Avenue between Western Avenue and Lincoln, including a new plaza next to the Western Brown Line station and raised bike lanes. The latter will complete the long-awaited Leland Neighborhood Greenway, a lower-stress, mostly side-street bike route connecting the North Shore Channel Trail and the Lakefront Trail.
As Hernandez discussed, the pedestrianization of Lincoln this week could foreshadow permanently turning this block of this historically German-American neighborhood's bustling "old world"-influenced retail strip into a car-free district. That's a common shopping district scenario in Europe. However, Hernandez noted, that wouldn't happen until more studies are conducted and community input is collected.
But it's not like that change to Lincoln would be unprecedented. Many decades ago, community leaders wisely chose to convert Lincoln between Lawrence Avenue and Leland from a two-way arterial street to a one-way southbound road with diagonal parking, rerouting through traffic to Western. And the City pedestrianized a short stretch of Giddings Street east of Lincoln to create Kempf (aka Giddings) Plaza, one of Chicago's most beloved community spaces. So making the adjacent block of Lincoln a "walking street" as well seems like no-brainer.
Happily, local transportation advocates aren't waiting around for decision-makers to turn Lincoln into a more people-friendly street – yesterday they did it themselves. "We've left a handful of benches out on the street to give visitors a place to sit while they enjoy a car-free week in Lincoln Square," explained livable streets booster Michael McLean.
He noted that opponents of permanently pedestrianizing Lincoln will balk at converting car space to people space. "But it's important to remember that the businesses here strong-armed the City into building a $1 million parking structure next door," he said. He was referring to merchants successfully pressuring officials to use tax credits to subsidize a parking deck with 18 public car spaces at a new affordable housing development across the street from the Brown Line stop.
"But what about the deliveries?" other Lincoln pedestrian street skeptics might ask. "I saw Amazon and UPS both doing deliveries just fine at Giddings," McLean reported.
Meanwhile the benefits of making Lincoln car-free this week are obvious. There's more space to walk, bike, relax, socialize, play, and leisurely visit the many enticing establishments along the corridor.
A moving image from today's "Guerrilla urbanism" event is this post by the father of Lily Shambrook, 3. She tragically lost her life in a June 2022 bike crash on Leland in Uptown, caused by a trucker blocking the bike lane.
Here are a couple of more photos provided by Michael McLean.
And this image posted during today's evening rush is pretty mind-blowing.
It is wild that there can be such liveliness on just a small patch of the massive percentage of land Chicago allocates to moving and storing large metal boxes.
Strong Towns Chicago & Heart of Lincoln Square will host a happy hour next to the temporary seating area tomorrow, Wednesday, April 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Square Taproom (formerly the chalet-like Huettenbar), 4721 N. Lincoln Ave.
Read the Block Club Chicago article here.
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