Eyes on the Street

[This article also appeared in "Checkerboard City," John's column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

Frequent Dearborn Street bike lane user Justin Haugens sends us these photos from his way to work in the South Loop. At the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council meeting two weeks ago, a CDOT staffer said that Dearborn Street would be receiving a slew of upgrades to better identify areas of conflict between people driving and bicycling, and to reduce the incidence of people parking and blocking the bike lane.

I went on a 25-mile bike ride yesterday to check up on livable streets projects around the city (final destination: Lao Beijing for dried chili chicken). On the trip I got a good look at the restriped bike lanes on King Drive in Bronzeville, the conversion of the Garfield Green Line station to a Green/Red/shuttle bus super station, the Red Line South reconstruction project, and lots of Divvy bike-share stations. I spotted three new Divvy locations and since my ride have heard about three more. Add the original Daley Plaza station and there are at least seven installed. Here's a quick recap of where you can find Divvy stations so far, and in a separate post I'll give a status report on the other projects.

The Chicago Department of Transportation's Milwaukee Avenue protected bike lane project, which will connect existing PBLs on Kinzie and Elston is rolling along at a rapid pace. Yesterday white thermoplastic stripes were visible in the central section of the project, which is not being repaved. After riding the street this afternoon, I'm pleased to report that the north and south sections of the strip, which have been an obstacle course of rough pavement and exposed manhole covers since repaving started last week, are now covered with a smooth layer of asphalt, and even some pavement markings. More striping has been added to the central section as well, so the bikeway design is starting to come into focus.

It was quite a surprise to come upon fresh white thermoplastic stripes on Milwaukee Avenue Thursday evening. Many Chicagoans have been eagerly anticipating new protected bike lanes on Milwaukee, the city's busiest bike street, which will be the missing link between existing PBLs on Kinzie and Elston. At a public meeting about the bike lanes at Intuit arts center on April 30, Chicago Department of Transportation staff said this stretch of Milwaukee would be repaved in May and the lanes constructed in June, pending continuing community outreach and final approval. At that meeting, a vocal minority of local business owners and residents complained about CDOT's proposal to relocate about half of the street's curbside parking spaces to side streets, as well as other details of the plan that they feared would make it harder to drive.

Kevin Zolkiewicz sent us these photos on Saturday showing the new pedestrian crossing signals pointing diagonally across the intersection of State Street and Jackson Boulevard, right outside DePaul University's Loop campus. We're waiting for confirmation from CDOT, but it looks like these signals are designed to work as part of an exclusive pedestrian phase -- known as a pedestrian scramble or Barnes Dance -- in which people on foot can cross the intersection in any direction. This treatment is common in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Tokyo.

The Trattoria No. 10 restaurant at 10 N Dearborn Street installed their own "stop for pedestrians" signs (taped to bricks) on Tuesday in the middle of the two-way Dearborn bike lane. The Chicago Department of Transportation received notification via Twitter, to which they responded:

On a recent trip on my "other bike," AKA the 'L,' I spotted two advertisements promoting Zipcar that could have easily been converted into advertisements for bike-share. Car-share and bike-share serve different purposes, but there's also some overlap -- car-share providers want to capture some trips that you could also make on a public bike. With Chicago's Divvy bike-share system set to launch soon, let's see whether we can adapt these Zipcar ads to the bike-share context.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein held an event last Thursday to flip on the new LED lights overlooking the beautified Congress Parkway streetscape that was completed last year. I visited on Sunday evening to take a look at the lights.