Steven Vance

Last Sunday, on a trip to New York, I rode the M15 Select Bus Service route on First Avenue in Manhattan. SBS incorporates components of bus rapid transit but it doesn't rise to the level of real BRT, according to standards laid out by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. Riding the M15 from 14th Street to 67th Street, I could tell that SBS is a significant improvement over typical bus service, but I also got a sense of its limitations. This revealed a lot about Chicago's BRT plans, and the reasoning behind the proposed design for BRT on Ashland Avenue. Simply put, Ashland BRT will avoid the shortcomings of SBS.

Divvy and the Chicago Department of Transportation quietly launched a new bike-share station suggestion map yesterday. The new version features design and speed improvements (both versions were built by the software division at OpenPlans, Streetsblog's parent non-profit).

After the fatal Metro-North commuter rail crash in the Bronx this weekend, yesterday the Chicago Tribune published an informative article about Positive Train Control for Metra. PTC is a technology that can slow or stop a train when the engineer is incapable of operating it, not paying attention, or when something else goes wrong.

While intercity and long-distance train travel is on the rise in the United States, Amtrak could still do a lot more to improve the customer experience and boost ridership further.

The Chicago Transit Authority has been planning an extension of the Red Line from its current terminus at 95th Street for decades and I joined a tour group at the Congress for New Urbanism’s transportation summit last week to see the proposed station locations. Development Communities Project's board member Phyllis Palmer led the tour because the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning has provided DCP with a Local Technical Assistance grant to prepare the Greater Roseland communities for the extension.

In a great example of President Obama's "fix it first" strategy (improving existing infrastructure before building new), the Federal Transit Administration is changing one of its rules to allow the Chicago Transit Authority to apply for a large grant to help fund the $2-4 billion Red-Purple Modernization project.

Speed cameras are already reducing speeding. A Chicago Department of Transportation press release notes that 507 vehicles per day were photographed speeding 10 mph or greater over the speed limit in the first week of an initial "warning" period at four locations.

Today in the Tribune, reporter Hal Dardick implied that Chicagoans should be outraged because, despite Rahm Emanuel's promise that money generated by speed cameras will be invested in traffic safety and violence prevention programs for kids, he hasn't created a separate "children's fund" in the proposed city budget. Dardick notes that any revenue generated by the cams will go into the city's general fund. The newspaper is using this relatively minor budget issue to fuel criticism that speed camera program isn't about safety but revenue. While the Trib has done more data analysis on speeding in Chicago than any other publication, the Trib too often skirts the fact that, around the world, the cameras have been proven to reduce speeding and traffic casualties.