Neighborhoods

It’s bad enough that it took the death of a small child at a Northwest Side intersection to spur the city into moving forward with prior plans to improve safety at that location. But it’s downright shameful that 38th Ward Alderman Nick Sposato is still pushing back against the project on the grounds that it will inconvenience drivers.

Thanks to an elegant new bridge over Lake Shore Drive, in the shadow of the Stephen Douglas memorial pillar, it’s now possible to bike directly down 35th Street from Bronzeville to the Lake Trail.

It's likely funding for urban transit will be harder to come by under the Trump administration. That could jeopardize chances to fund the Red and Purple Modernization project (RPM).

Here’s some info about transit inequality that I had to leave out of this week’s Chicago Reader column about transportation issues that impact local Latino communities, due to space limitations.

[Last year the Chicago Reader launched a weekly transportation column written by Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield. We syndicate a portion of the column on Streetsblog after it comes out online; you can read the remainder on the Reader’s website or in print.]

Sunday’s grand opening for Big Marsh bike park and nature reserve was a long-anticipated celebration. If you’re not familiar with Big Marsh or its history, Streetsblog’s John Greenfield previously covered the plans and the challenges of accessing the site by bike.

In a recent post about the grand opening of the Argyle Shared Street, a pedestrian-priority makeover of Chicago's Southeast Asian shopping and dining district, I wondered out loud whether the red, green, and orange hues in the new streetscape were inspired by the vivid colors of the Vietnamese cuisine for which the strip is famous. Later I ran the question by Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey, who put me in touch with Ernest Wong, an architect with Site Design Group, which designed the shared street.

This afternoon in Uptown, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 48th Ward alderman Harry Osterman, and other local officials cut the ribbon on the Argyle “shared street,” a pedestrian-priority design inspired by similar streets in Asia and Europe. By calming traffic and blurring the lines between spaces for walking and vehicles, as well as providing more room for sidewalk cafes and special events, the streetscape should increase safety while giving a boost to businesses on Chicago’s Southeast Asian retail strip.

The Chicago Transit Authority published its Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Red Line extension from 95th St. to 130th St. in the Riverdale community area last month, and it includes a couple of good and bad surprises. An EIS is a study that federal law requires before the United States Department of Transportation fund any highway or transit infrastructure.