47th Ward

Transit consultant Ed Zotti, talked about his idea for waterfront transit lines at the 47th Ward Transit Committee meeting.

Unlike the community meeting for the Dickens greenway in Lincoln Park, there was little vocal pushback against the project.

While the Dickens Greenway proposal in Lincoln Park has been highly controversial, meeting with Lincoln Square neighborhood groups early in the planning process is promoting buy-in.

The route would run from the Chicago River to Western Avenue.

While the traffic-calmed side-street bikeway is already underway in the 46th Ward, there are currently no plans to extend it west.

Last night, local community leaders and dozens of senior citizens showed up for the CTA’s 2015 budget hearing, imploring the agency to restore the full #11 Lincoln Avenue bus route.

The long-awaited Lawrence streetscape and road diet is is almost complete, and the project has already transformed a corridor that had been unpleasant for pedestrians and cyclists into a much more livable street. Meanwhile, construction is also wrapping up on a new, supersized Metra station house on Lawrence.

Yesterday DNAinfo reported that a block club is pushing to expand permit parking in Uptown and Andersonville, in response to complaints that workers at a nearby office building are taking up too many parking spaces on side streets. The Illinois Department of Human Services recently took over three floors of a ten-story building at 5050 North Broadway, owned by Imperial Realty, to house about 400 workers. The building is otherwise largely empty.

Chicagoans by now have noticed dozens, if not hundreds, of signs in the middle of two-lane streets telling people driving and bicycling about the state law requiring them to stop for people in crosswalks. The statewide law went into effect in 2010, and Chicago passed an identical law in 2011. Transportation departments, residents, and the Active Transportation Alliance have been working hard ever since to educate people about the law, and these signs represent the best effort so far because of their immediate effect.