Argyle Shared Street

The Argyle Shared Street project, designed to calm traffic, provide more space for pedestrians and sidewalk cafes, creating a safer, more pleasant, and more profitable business strip, is a great idea. But so far the layout for the streetscape initiative, which raised the street up to sidewalk level and blurred the lines between pedestrian and vehicle space, has not proved to be intuitive for drivers.

The Argyle Shared Street, a project to create a safer and more pleasant environment on Chicago’s Southeast Asian shopping and dining strip by blurring the lines between pedestrian and vehicle space, reopened to two-way traffic last week.

It’s official: Argyle Street in Uptown is now a thoroughfare that prioritizes walking. Today City Council passed an ordinance that designates the three-block-long stretch of Argyle between Broadway and Sheridan Road a “Shared Street,” where the line between space for vehicles and pedestrians is blurred.

The Chicago Department of Transportation is currently hashing out an ordinance to regulate how motorists will behave on the Argyle “shared street" [PDF], a pedestrian-priority zone slated for construction next year. The streetscape project -- the first of its kind in Chicago -- will create a plaza-like feel along Argyle from Broadway to Sheridan, by raising the street level and eliminating curbs. Slow motorized traffic and car parking will still be permitted on the street, but pedestrians will rule the space.

On a recent bicycle trip, I came across a Dutch-style woonerf or "living street,” in the western suburb of Batavia, where Streetsblog Chicago reporter Steven Vance attended high school. The street layout blurs the line between pedestrian and vehicle space, encouraging drivers to proceed with caution, creating a more pleasant environment for walking, biking, shopping, and relaxing at sidewalk cafes. It’s a good preview of the proposed layout for "shared streets" in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.