Steven Vance

What you're seeing isn't a typical "Eyes on the Street" because we got our "eyes" up in the air with the new Streetsblog Chicago Traffic Chopper (actually a drone camera) to check in on the reconstruction of the CTA's Wilson 'L' station in Uptown. The project, which began in 2014, will make the train stop fully accessible to people with disabilities, add a new entrance on Sunnyside, and enable transfers between Red and Purple lines for the first time.

The national advocacy group People for Bikes just announced their new Bike Network Analysis scoring system and gave Chicago a low ranking, but there are ways we can improve that number.

The Chicago Transit Authority celebrated the 125th anniversary of the 'L' yesterday by bringing out rapid transit cars built in 1923 and in 1976. The Chicago & South Side Rapid Transit Railroad Company commenced "Alley L" service on June 6, 1892, in an alley east of State Street between Congress Parkway and 39th Street, according to the CTA. The CTA also highlighted its own 70 years of service. The authority was created in 1947 to unify the different bus, streetcar, and elevated companies.

Metra has proposed sweeping schedule changes on the Electric District services that will increase service to one neighborhood, decrease service to other comunities, and fully eliminate weekend service on the Blue Island branch.

According to a new CMAP report, federal guidelines generally discourage mixed-use development.

One neat trick could go a long way towards solving the traffic problems at Wicker Park's complicated six-way intersection.

Adding new asphalt on the 22 miles of the Tri-State between Rosemont and Oak Lawn would be a waste of money because highway expansion inevitably induces more traffic.

Currently thousands of workers in Chicagoland have part of their wages set aside to buy a transit pass. This occurs before taxes are deducted from their paychecks, and thus saves them a few hundred bucks each year in income taxes. Not everyone can do this, but a new bill in the Illinois House of Representatives intends to increase access to this federal tax benefit, as well provide an alternative option for paying for transit.

Chicago transportation commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld is voicing support for a proposal to use a device known as a "textalyzer" to crack down on distracted driving with cellphones. Two aldermen, Anthony Beale Beale (9th) and Edward Burke (14th), have introduced a resolution asking the Chicago Police Department to look into using a $10,000 device from Cellebrite, which makes phone data extraction and hacking tools, that would allow officers to immediately copy the data on a motorist’s phone to determine if they had been using it while driving.

The Hong Kong Airport Express train is a bad example on which to base a Chicago service because it's the Hong Kong airport's only rail link, and it was funded by private real estate operations.