Active Transportation Alliance

All photos are by James Porter.

By Richard Day and Conor Durkin

The department needs to promptly plow bikeways after blizzards, or else face arguments that riders were better off with old-style, paint-only bike lanes.

Yesterday's #GivingTuesday was very cold and snowy, and the protected bike lanes were generally still full of the white stuff long after the storm. (Don't worry, Streetsblog is still trying to get to the bottom of that issue.) But at least a dozen of us pedaled to one of Chicagoland's most vibrant celebrations of the livable streets movement, the Active Transportation Alliance's annual member party.

Since 1992, the CTA Holiday Train has been a Chicago Christmas tradition. Now people don't need to ride it to appreciate its splendor. Daniel Moreno, a photographer from Venezuela who now lives in Chicago, has spent several years capturing the decorated 'L' train.

Got a fun photo of Kathy Schubert at a bike ride or advocacy event that you'd like to share? Please send it to me a jgreenfield[at]streetsblog[dot]org and I may add it to this post, and/or create a gallery of images that I'll link to here.

New York City dominated the headlines today after electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor. But it wasn't the only big U.S. city that's made history in the past week.

On Tuesday, I hopped on my bicycle and high-tailed it from Chicago to Springfield, Illinois, the state capital, in an effort to sample my first-ever horseshoe sandwich. In case you're not familiar with that delicacy, it's an open-faced sandwich composed of thick-sliced toast, a protein (often hamburger patties, but there are several other options), cheese sauce, and french fries. It's an indigenous dish of Flower City and, as far as I know, it's no longer available in the Windy City.