Eyes on the Street

A springtime walk in the park, or down a sidewalk, should be simple and straightforward. Alas, there are some places around Chicago where someone out for a stroll instead has to dodge parked cars that plainly have no place within the sidewalk.

Over the past few months, I have witnessed several instances of the Chicago Police Department violating the laws they are entrusted to enforce -- namely, those laws that keep bike lanes and sidewalks clear from obstructions like automobiles. In none of these instances were public safety emergencies apparent within the immediate area, nor were any of the police officers present urgently scrambling to a crime scene.

Business owners along the Elston corridor recently groused about the city’s plans to upgrade the bike lanes between North and Webster from conventional to buffered lanes, arguing that bicyclists get in the way of their trucks. This week, cyclists in Elston’s existing protected bike lanes, located between Milwaukee and North, have had plenty of obstructions themselves.

Pedestrian islands make walking across a street safer and easier. At signalized intersections, they allow individuals who might have trouble crossing the street in a single walk cycle, such as people with disabilities, seniors and parents with small children, to make a partial crossing and then safely wait for the next cycle. At unsignalized crosswalks, they allow everybody to cross half of the street when there's no oncoming traffic to the left, and then wait safely until the coast is clear on the right. However, Chicago drivers sure dish out plenty of abuse to these concrete refuges.

As if bicycling downtown, where there is little space to safely pedal, wasn't hard enough, private limo bus company Windy City Limousine frequently blocks bike lanes on Franklin Street outside Walgreens and Orleans next to the Merchandise Mart.

Yesterday I looked at crosswalks that were installed in November at the Logan Square traffic circle and are already vanishing. This afternoon I dropped by the city's only pedestrian scramble intersection, downtown at State and Jackson, where X-shaped crosswalks were striped last May and are now almost completely gone.

The chaotic traffic circle around Logan Square's eagle-topped Illinois Centennial Monument pillar is a major barrier for pedestrians, discouraging foot traffic from one side of the neighborhood to the other. As a result, the multilane roundabout lowers revenue for businesses along on Logan Boulevard, Milwaukee and Kedzie.

This winter, Chicago’s fifth snowiest on record, with over 20 subzero days, has been a test for whether bike-share can be viable year-round in U.S. cities with harsh northern climates. The multitude of baby-blue bikes I observed whizzing by the Daley Center during this evening's rush hour (and, no, Critical Mass hadn’t started yet) suggests Divvy is still going strong. I buttonholed bike-share user Adam Loedint, an engineer, to ask how the system has been working out for him during this unforgiving season.

A snowy neckdown -- or "sneckdown" -- is that place in the roadway where the snow sticks around because no one drives over it. Sneckdowns show where there's too much asphalt that could easily be claimed for pedestrian space and traffic calming.