Steven Vance

The Illinois Department of Transportation announced last week [PDF] that it is distributing over $20 million in Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program funds to bicycle and pedestrian projects in the Chicagoland area. Highlights for Chicago include:

Nine days ago Streetsblog forwarded South Shore resident Deborah Harrington's photo of a pavement cave-in in the bike lane at 7300 S South Shore Drive to the Department of Transportation. Today Deborah excitedly emailed me some photos she took of the site, where Department of Water Management crews are now diligently working in 10°F weather to repair it properly. She writes:

Earlier this week, the Chicago Tribune published an analysis of Chicago traffic crash data, finding that "from 2007 through 2011, nearly 1,700 youths, ages 5 to 18, were struck by vehicles in Chicago within about a block of a school." Half of all pedestrian injuries to children occur near schools, and it's great to have the local press draw attention to the problem. The next step is to start thinking about how to make entire routes to school safer for walking and biking.

Reader Anne Alt sends in these photos showing the dismal walking conditions at alley crossings and street intersections in the Loop. She reports that the alley crossings in her photos have turned into ice ponds:

The Wolf Point site, just south of the Apparel Mart and Chicago Sun-Times building at the confluence of the Chicago River's three branches, has been begging for more productive uses for decades. Momentum has been building since developers associated with the Kennedy family proposed a plan for three towers at Wolf Point in 2007, and the proposal picked up speed in 2012 as it began accumulating the various permissions needed to move forward. Last Thursday, all 21 members of the Chicago Plan Commission signed off on the project, at a hearing that revealed one of the key flaws in the way Chicago manages growth and development.

[This piece also appears in Checkerboard City, John's weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

If the snow we're going to get tonight sticks around, we're gonna have to shovel it. But what if you aren't home or you need some help? Enter Adopt-A-Sidewalk, a website that came out of a collaboration between the City of Chicago and local developers.

The Chicago Transit Authority is out with a new publication called "When Things Go Wrong on the CTA" and recently gave a televised tour of its control center to Chicago Tonight -- two recent examples that highlight how the agency is improving its communication with riders.

Local cyclists have long dreamed of a complete network of bicycle paths along the various branches of the Chicago River. This fall we’ll be moving three miles closer to that goal when the Cook County Forest Preserve District begins construction on a southern extension of the North Branch Trail. Meanwhile, the trail is also being expanded about a mile east from its northern terminus to connect with the Green Bay and Robert McClory trails.

On Monday the Chicago Sun-Times noted the large uptick in pedestrian fatalities in 2012 compared to the three years prior. Last year, 48 pedestrians were killed by drivers in Chicago, compared to 35 in 2009, 30 in 2010, and 31 in 2011. Understanding the underlying causes is difficult: Right now, there is troublingly little information from the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois Department of Transportation about why pedestrian deaths rose last year.