Events

On Monday, Governor Quinn’s Northeast Illinois Public Transit Taskforce released its final report, underscoring the need for better funding for regional transit. Yesterday, the Center for Neighborhood Technology and the Active Transportation Alliance launched a new campaign, dubbed "Transit Future," to raise that money via a new Cook County-based revenue stream that would help the region leverage federal dollars.

Chicago aldermen traditionally use their $1.3 million in discretionary “menu” money for basic street, sidewalk and lighting improvements. However, this year a handful of wards are holding participatory budgeting elections. These often result in money being set aside for innovative transportation projects, and walking and biking infrastructure is a relative bargain. 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore, who five years ago became the first U.S. elected official to pioneer the participatory budgeting process, is once again holding a PB election, and a few walking, biking, and transit projects may be on the ballot.

Last weekend's Blue Line track work, just one week of the months-long Your New Blue project, pushed rail riders onto shuttle buses that ran along Milwaukee Avenue -- and right through a traffic jam created by the very same track work. Instead of following the designated detour, drivers diverted from Fullerton and Sacramento Avenues under the Blue Line piled onto Milwaukee Avenue and slowed buses to a crawl.

Years ago, under Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Chicago Department of Transportation proposed piloting the city’s first protected bike lane on Stony Island between 69th and 77th. By February 2011 they’d received a $3.2 million federal grant to build it. However, construction wasn’t slated to begin until 2014.

Currently, the Green Line’s Morgan station, with its sleek green glass canopies, has my vote for the most attractive CTA stop. That’s about to change, as the Chicago Department of Transportation gets ready to build a new superstation at Washington and Wabash featuring dramatic undulating awnings, designed by Teng + Associates. The city says the faceted skeletal steel and glass structures refer to the curving forms of the lakefront and Grant Park, as well as the historic Jeweler’s Row district on Wabash; I think they resemble a ribcage. Either way, they’ll be a striking addition to the city.

Divvy announced the Divvy Data Challenge's six winners this morning on its website. I talked to three winners to learn how they created their submissions, and what they learned about Divvy users in the process. The Data Challenge began February 11, when Divvy released data about 759,788 trips taken in 2013 and asked the public to create visualizations of numbers and patterns about bike-share in Chicago.

This week, the CTA held a series of community meetings where South Siders had a chance to meet the artists selected to create public art as part of the $425 million South Red Line rehab, from Cermak-Chinatown to 87th Street. The pieces are meant to improve the aesthetics of the stations and enhance the rider experience along the recently overhauled transit corridor.

The Chicago Department of Planning and Development wants to dispel the notion that "transit-oriented development" only means high-rises. The agency will host two public meetings to gather ideas from residents who live near the city's 77 Metra stations on the kinds of development and station changes they'd like to see in their neighborhoods. The meetings are part of a "typology study" to classify Metra stations relative to their surrounding neighborhoods' shared characteristics and potential for development and public space improvements.

After more than a decade of planning, the Chicago Department of Transportation finally kicked off work on the Navy Pier Flyover, a $60 million project that will solve the problem of the dangerous bottleneck at the center of the 18.5-mile Lakefront Trail. “We at the city have discussed this, we have debated it, we have deferred it for decades, and now it’s time to build it,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel at a groundbreaking this afternoon.