Eyes on the Street

Note: Keating Law Offices, P.C. has generously agreed to sponsor two Streetsblog Chicago posts about bicycle safety topics per month. The firm's support will help make Streetsblog Chicago a sustainable project. Keating Law Offices is not involved in the Bobby Cann case.

There have been have been plenty of complaints in the media that the Lincoln Hub placemaking project is causing a traffic nightmare at Lincoln, Wellington, and Southport in Lakeview. The intiative was spearheaded by the local chamber of commerce in order to create safer conditions for all road users and encourage people to linger and spend money at the six-way intersection.

I spent about five years in the early 2000s coordinating bicycle rack installations for the Chicago Department of Transportation. One of the main takeaways from that very enjoyable job was that, when it comes to bike parking, form really does follow function. Although designers are constantly trying to reinvent the wheel by building a better bike rack, it's hard to beat the no-frills "inverted U" style CDOT has been putting in since the early Nineties.

Whether you're a rabid Blackhawks fan or couldn't care less about professional sports, Monday night was an unforgettable evening on the streets of Chicago -- and on its newest bike and pedestrian paths.

With the Friday opening of the Chicago Riverwalk’s third new section, dubbed The River Theater, wheelchair users, families with strollers, and bicyclists have a new way to get down to the riverfront from Upper Wacker. This segment, located between Clark and LaSalle, consists almost entirely of stair-stepped, amphitheater-style seating. However, the steps are split up by gently graded, ADA-compliant ramps that zigzag back and forth across the stately new public space.

In a 2009 Chicago Reader story, I noted that the best-case scenario for the Bloomingdale Trail elevated greenway would be a 2016 opening, in time for the Olympics, if then-mayor Richard M. Daley succeeded in winning the games. We all know what happened with the Olympic effort.

Chicagoans are in for a treat this Saturday, when the Bloomingdale Trail, aka The 606, finally opens to the public. For roughly two decades, residents have been pushing to turn the 2.7-mile railroad right-of-way into a multiuse path and linear park.

Just as Richard M. Daley made his mark on Chicago with Millennium Park, Rahm Emanuel is creating a number of marquee public space projects, including the redevelopment of Northerly Island, Maggie Daley Park, and the Bloomingdale Trail. The latest is a new, two-block stretch of the Chicago Riverwalk, between State and Clark, which opened on Saturday. The riverwalk extension is slated to reach Lake Street and Wacker Driver next year, creating a car-free pedestrian and bike route all the way to Lake Michigan.

Here's a quick update on the Lincoln Hub traffic calming and placemaking project at Wellington/Southport/Lincoln. By noon today, workers had finished painting the dots at the northern corner of the six-way intersection, and were well on the way to finishing the northwest corner. By the evening commute, it's likely that all the dots will be filled in. After a few few more planters and seating units are added, hopefully by this weekend, the project will be complete. If there's nice weather on Saturday, it will be fun to see how residents use the new public space.