Steven Vance

Earlier this year, transit-oriented development made the jump from being proposed and built only next to Chicago Transit Authority stations to also being proposed next to a Metra station. Now, the trend that has brought hundreds of new market-rate and affordable designated housing units to vacant lots near Chicago 'L' stations has jumped to the South Side. A two and a half-year-old ordinance is the cause for these new housing development patterns in the city.

Evanston installed new protected bike lanes on Dodge Avenue from Howard Street to Lake Street last month, and already some residents are complaining that the lanes have made it unsafe to park their cars. But these fears are unfounded because Chicago has had protected lanes with a nearly identical design for five years.

The 33rd Ward is holding the monthly meeting of its Transportation Action Committee on Thursday to discuss the Manor Greenway, a proposal from the Chicago Department of Transportation to connect two multi-use park paths via an on-street route on Manor Greenway. Jeff Sobczyk, assistant to Alder Deb Mell, said in the meeting announcement that the time would be used to improve understanding of the project's goals. Neighborhood greenways are intended to make it safer and more convenient to cycle on Chicago's side streets.

Cook County's new "Long Range Transportation Plan," released last week, is the first such document published since 1940 and is a policy platform that will guide decisions about transportation spending for the next 24 years. To the credit of county officials, the plan voices strong support for improving walking, biking, and transit, which represents a major change for a governmental body that has focused on facilitating driving for many decades. However, I'd argue that the document, called "Connecting Cook County," falls short of being a plan when it come to setting concrete goals for promoting sustainable transportation, and that's a missed opportunity.

Motorists drove carefully around the large crowd of supporters that had gathered and spilled into the roadway last night at the corner of Belmont and Sacramento, where Virginia Murray was fatally struck while riding a bicycle on July 1.

Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report showing that all traffic fatalities increased significantly on U.S. roads from 2014 to 2015, by 7.7 percent to reach 35,200, the worst death toll since the 2008 economic crash. Streetsblog USA's Angie Schmitt pointed out that, while Americans drove 3.5 percent more during this period, that's "not enough to explain the rising death toll." U.S. pedestrian and bike fatalities rose even more during that period, by 10 and 15 percent, respectively.

A new bill that would generate more funding for four large-scale Chicago transit infrastructure projects, without diverting tax revenues from schools, passed the Illinois House and Senate today. The original bill was introduced in January 2015, spearheaded by the Metropolitan Planning Council. It awaits Governor Bruce Rauner's signature, who is expected to sign a budget today after a year of operating the state without a budget for a year – reducing funding for transit agencies, schools, and social services.

Get national headlines at Streetsblog USA

Last week, the Chicago Department of Transportation revealed its proposal to connect riverfront paths, reduce cut through traffic, and make it safer to walk and bike along streets in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood. CDOT developed the plan for a "neighborhood greenway" between Horner Park and Ronan Park along the north branch of the Chicago River over the past two years, at the request of 33rd Ward Alder Deb Mell, and the Transportation Action Committee she started.

Over the past few years the city has built a handful of "neighborhood greenways," projects that involve small changes to side streets that can have a big impact in making them more bikeable, while connecting residential areas to the wider network of bike lanes. If the Chicago Department of Transportation picks up the pace on building these bikeways, it could actually create the kind of "8 to 80" bike network that the department says is its goal, and the Active Transportation Alliance and other advocates have been pushing for.