Funding & Finance

[This piece also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield's transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the street in print on Wednesday evenings.]

[This article also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield's weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Wednesday evenings.]

Lovers of sustainable transportation and beer rejoice! As I type this, on-street bike racks are being bolted into the asphalt in front of Revolution Brewing, 2323 North Milwaukee in Logan Square. This will be Chicago’s fifth on-street bike parking corral, replacing car parking spaces with bike racks. I talked with owner Josh Deth (an old friend of mine) about the benefits of the corral for his businesses and the community, and the sometimes-challenging process of navigating the city’s bureaucracy for permits.

It's been a long time in the making, but it looks like the Berteau Neighborhood Greenway, albeit a somewhat watered-down version, will be debuting this summer. On Friday 47th Ward Alderman Ameya Pawar announced that in June the Chicago Department of Transportation will begin construction of the greenway, a traffic-calmed, bike-priority street, known elsewhere as a "bike boulevard," on a one-mile stretch between Lincoln and Clark. The work will start immediately after the city's water department replaces a 100-year-old water main on Berteau between Ravenswood and Ashland.

The results of last week's participatory budgeting elections show that, when you give them a chance, Chicago residents are happy to support projects that make our streets safer, more efficient and more vibrant. The 5th, 45th, 46th and 49th wards took part in the PB process, which allows citizens to propose ideas for each district's $1.3 million in discretionary "menu" money and then vote on the projects that make it on the final ballot. While aldermen traditionally decide how menu money is used, and normally opt for basic street, sidewalk and lighting improvements, these results mean several innovative walking, biking, transit and public space initiatives will debut in the near future.

Traditionally, Chicago aldermen choose to spend their discretionary “menu” funds on meat-and-potatoes infrastructure projects like street repaving, sidewalk repair, and streetlight replacement. This week, however, residents in four different wards are voting in participatory budgeting elections, helping to decide how their district’s $1.3 million in menu money will be spent. Three of the wards will have innovative walking, biking, and transit proposals on the ballot, but one of them won’t.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s announcement today that he has renegotiated the city's much-hated parking meter contract to save an estimated $1 billion over the next 71 years appears to be a big win for Chicago residents. The introduction of a new pay-by-cell option, albeit with a 35-cent convenience fee, also seems to be a good thing. But while many Chicagoans will cheer the news that Sunday parking would be free as part of the agreement, in reality this may hurt local businesses and lead to more traffic jams.

Residents of the 49th Ward, which includes Rogers Park and the Loyola University Campus, can now vote on how to spend their alderman's discretionary "menu" money. In 2010, Alderman Joe Moore became the first U.S. politician to implement this democratic budgeting process, called participatory budgeting. This year he's allocating $1 million of the ward's $1.3 million in menu funds for projects proposed and approved by his constituents. As in the other three wards participating in the participatory budgeting process, residents 16 and older can vote.

Members of The Chainlink, a local bike social networking website with over 8,500 members, were alarmed by a report that Millennium Park’s bike station will no longer offer free, indoor parking to the general public. Upon closer inspection, though, the news isn’t so bad.