Streetsblog Chicago

"Hurry up, it's time for supper"

On Thursday, DuPage County and the City of Elmhurst staged a pop-up event where road space near the Illinois Prairie Path was covered with lawn furniture, flower pots, toys, and artificial grass to create "parklets."

Tragically, a motorist in an SUV fatally struck a senior citizen last Tuesday in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood and fled the scene.

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

• Crain's: "Johnson faces pushback over [likely CTA president pick City of Chicago's COO John Roberson] as advocates push for broader search"

Good news for rail fans: Recently, Illinois legislators discussed a groundbreaking bill to launch statewide train service.

On Thursday, I heard the tragic news that groundbreaking singer-songwriter Jill Sobule had passed away at age 66, in a house fire early that morning while she was visiting the Twin Cities. Among many other great folk and pop tunes, she was known for her 1995 hits "I Kissed a Girl," the first LGBTQ-themed recording to make the Billboard Top 20, and "Supermodel," which appeared on the soundtrack for the movie "Clueless." She had been booked to perform in her hometown of Denver on Friday evening, but instead the venue hosted an impromptu memorial.

Last week, I took a fairly deep dive into the recurring traffic crash epidemic near Loyola University. Read the article to get up to speed on the situation. It has included two bus-pedestrian collisions within a week in February, at or near Sheridan Road and Kenmore Avenue, between the main campus and the Kenmore bike-pedestrian mall.

Plus a discussion of why at many Metra stations, if you're not a daily commuter, it can be maddeningly non-obvious which platform you need to wait on.