Sustainable Transportation Advocacy

Last Thursday, the Active Transportation Alliance held its annual Movers and Shakers Ball, a fundraising gala to support the work of the advocacy group, which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. 

The proposal calls for converting one curbside parking lane to make room for PBLs, which has worked well on streets like Milwaukee and Clark.

Yesterday, Block Club Chicago's Alex V. Hernandez reported that the 4700 block Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Square community would be opened for car-free use starting Monday, for the next week. That's being done to accommodate construction work on Leland Avenue between Western Avenue and Lincoln, including a new plaza next to the Western Brown Line station and raised bike lanes. The latter will complete the long-awaited Leland Neighborhood Greenway, a lower-stress, mostly side-street bike route connecting the North Shore Channel Trail and the Lakefront Trail.

Read the previously published first portion of this interview, focusing on the 25 mph speed limit issue, here.

When the pandemic-induced bicycle boom went bust a couple of years ago, a number of long-established Chicago bike shops became casualties of the slowing market. From perennial institutions like Cycle Smithy and On the Route, to newer entrants like Earth Rider Cyclery, our city witnessed an unprecedented contraction in independent bike shops in the last few years. 

The Active Transportation Alliance recently hosted one of its monthly Advocacy Connect online lunchtime talks. This time the focus was on the CTA's Frequent Bus Network plan, several State transit- and biking-related bills, and the campaign for a 25 mph speed limit.

The Metra commuter rail system is considering renaming lines to make the system easier to understand for new and occasional riders. To get feedback on the idea from customers, the agency is conducting an online survey and scheduled three public meetings at downtown terminals this week. On Tuesday, an open house was held at Chicago Union Station, on Wednesday, it was at Ogilvie Transportation Center, and today they're at Millennium Station and La Salle Street Station from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. All Metra routes

Streetsblog Chicago is a sustainable transportation news and advocacy website, not a publication that typically covers finance. So it's not really my role to opine on whether it was a smart fiscal decision for the City Council to approve an $830 million bond deal to pay for transportation infrastructure. But let's look at how the narrow 26-23 vote went down last Wednesday; some arguments against and for the financing by alders; and reactions from walk/bike/transit boosters.

There was also discussion of ATA volunteering opportunities for National Bike Month and the Week Without Driving.