Steven Vance

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's GO TO 2040 regional comprehensive plan has weathered some major ups and downs in its four-year lifespan. CMAP has received several awards for the plan, which required a huge effort on their part to reach out to local residents and overwrite decades of uncoordinated transportation "plans."

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Lisa Santos hopes that a new Lincoln Avenue Placemaking Plan will "slow down traffic – people, too – on Lincoln Avenue, so they can see our independent businesses." Santos owns Southport Grocery and also chairs the West Lakeview Special Service Area #27, one of Chicago's 44 business improvement districts. The SSA and the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce are working with Site Design Group to highlight Lincoln's street corners and "keep people walking" down the street.

Bicycle routes through the Loop suffer from "poor connectivity," admits Mike Amsden, assistant director of transportation planning at the Chicago Department of Transportation. At yesterday’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting, Amsden revealed details about how the Central Loop BRT project will improve the situation by spring of 2015.

A new study [PDF] commissioned by the Active Transportation Alliance put forth a "conservative" estimate that Chicagoans make nearly 125,000 bicycle trips each day for transportation, in addition to purely recreational trips. Almost 91,000, or 73 percent, of the trips are utilitarian – for shopping, errands, church, and doctor appointments.

Chicago has long blocked cut-through car traffic on lightly traveled residential streets with hundreds of cul-de-sacs sprinkled throughout the city. The same traffic diversion tactics could also improve safety for bicyclists at dangerous intersections by simplifying movements and removing potential conflict points.

The Chicago Department of Planning and Development is looking for the right developer for vacant city-owned property near the Howard CTA station. Last week, the city released a request for proposals for the 1.05 acre parcel at 7519-33 N Ashland Avenue, between Howard and Rogers Avenue, and asked specifically for transit-friendly and walkable development proposals. The site is zoned for up to 229,310 square feet of business and residential development, enough to fit about 200 apartments and a small supermarket-sized store.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has proposed to build the city's first-ever traffic diverters and bike-friendly speed humps, as part of the Leland Avenue neighborhood greenway through Uptown. The traffic diverter at Beacon will block cut-through car traffic, making Leland a quieter, more comfortable street for bicyclists. Speed humps would replace stop signs, and feature a gentle "sinusoidal" hump – quite a change compared to the "hitting the wall" feeling of the city's current speed humps.

National Bike Month in May results in an inevitable flurry of national press articles trumpeting bike commuting. The headlines can get pretty repetitive: "Top 10 Cities for Bicycling," "Bike To Work Rate Grows," "City Adds 10 More Miles of Bike Lanes."

The Chicago Department of Transportation has a rare clean-slate opportunity to design a Street of Dreams -- a street that incorporates many leading-edge safety features. That opportunity is phase three of their Wells-Wentworth Connector between Chinatown and the South Loop, a future southward extension of Wells Street that longtime South Loop resident Dennis McClendon calls "Riverside Boulevard."