Design

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.

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."

Due to the cold spring, the Chicago Department of Transportation's bikeways construction season got off to a late start. Thermoplastic pavement markings don’t adhere properly to asphalt at temperatures below 50 Fahrenheit, as evidenced by bike lanes and crosswalks in various parts of town that were striped too late in the season in 2013 and have quickly deteriorated. Therefore, it was wise to wait for warmer weather this year.

Crews were out installing lane markings and bike symbols for a Wood Street bike route, running through Wicker Park, on Wednesday. They installed a contraflow bike lane on Wicker Park Avenue, which runs one-way westbound. The lane will allow for eastbound bicyclists to continue along Wood via a short diagonal jog via Wolcott Avenue and Wicker Park, and then back to Wood.

Last night, the Chicago Transit Authority explained at a packed open house that it simply cannot run any more Red Line trains through the Clark Junction, the busy crossing one block north of the Belmont station where the Brown Line splits from the Red and Purple Lines. To untangle the crossing, CTA has proposed a flyover that would send northbound Brown Line trains over, instead of in the way of, up to three Red and Purple Line trains that pass every 3-7 minutes during rush hour. CTA spokesperson Catherine Hosinski said that previous news reports, focusing on today's average 84-second delay, miss the point: The project is about improving reliability today, and increasing Red Line service in the future.

I recently sat down with Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld to discuss the city’s efforts to create safer, more efficient conditions for walking, transit and biking. We’ll be publishing the interview in a few installments, starting with this conversation about plans for bus rapid transit in the Loop.

Evanston has a reputation as one of Chicagoland’s most progressive suburbs. That could change if the city’s bike plan update, intended to encourage more pedaling, takes the counterproductive step of recommending banning bikes on some streets. Earlier this month, a public input session for the plan left many locals distressed about the possibility of the city “restricting” cycling on segments of some roads.

For the second year in the row, voters passed over bicycle projects in the 45th Ward’s participatory budgeting election. But separately, a safety overhaul of Milwaukee Avenue, including protected bike lanes, may still be in the works for this Northwest Side district.

Last week I reported that the Belmont-Clark tower, located a block from a Red Line station, may include 90 rental units but only 39 parking spaces. A commenter scoffed, “Good luck renting those apartments when they run out of parking spaces.” However, the 1611 West Division rental tower, which opened last year next to the Division Blue Line stop, shows that new residential buildings near transit with little or, in this case, no tenant parking can be a big success.