Funding & Finance

On Wednesday at around 4 p.m. a motorist struck and injured an elderly woman at the intersection of Devon and Greenview, on the border between Edgewater and Rogers Park.

Each of Chicago’s 50 wards gets an annual $1.3 million in discretionary “menu” funding to spend on infrastructure projects each year. Usually the alderman decides how the money is spent and typically most of the money is used for traditional projects like street resurfacing, sidewalk repair, and streetlamp installation.

Yesterday evening Steven Vance and I conducted speed counts that quantify what we already suspected to be true. The new raised crosswalks on the north side of Palmer Square park are calming traffic and making it safer for residents to access the green space. While, prior to installation, about 75 percent of motorists on the street were observed exceeding the 25 mph speed limit, yesterday less than 38 percent of them were.

A new report by the Metropolitan Planning Council finds that Illinois needs to invest $43 billion over the next decade to get its roads, bridges, and transit lines in a state of good repair. This is a daunting number, especially for a state that has gone over nine months without a budget plan. However, the nonprofit argues that this goal is achievable if leaders recognize the importance of facing the problem head-on by creating a new funding stream, rather than dealing with the costly consequences of continuing to neglect our transportation network.

A new report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology quantifies something that we already suspected to be true: Apartment buildings in the Chicago area tend to have way too much off-street car parking. The report, titled Stalled Out: How Empty Parking Spaces Diminish Neighborhood Affordability, points out that, since parking spots are surprisingly expensive to build, this surplus of spots drives up housing costs.

For the second time, we’re in danger of losing the South Chicago Velodrome, the city’s only bike racing track, which also hosts youth education programs. Bike mechanic Marcus Moore, who spearheaded the campaign to save the track last year after its original owner gave up on running it, says he’s now getting burned out himself after spending countless unpaid hours on the revival effort.

The Regional Transportation Authority's newest report, issued last week, compares the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, and Pace, to their respective peers around the country. The report found that the CTA is efficient, relative to rapid transit systems in Atlanta, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

Although the Chicago Park District says nonstop commuting on the Bloomingdale Trail, aka The 606, is legal during park curfew hours of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., the Chicago Police Department disagrees, and they currently clear the path of all users at 11.

Say goodbye to the Heritage Bicycles People Spot.