Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Ashland BRT

LA’s Orange Line Offers a Sneak Peek at Fast Ashland Bus Service

By John Greenfield | Mar 12, 2014 | 28 Comments

When I visited Los Angeles earlier this winter, I took a ride on the Orange Line, a bus rapid transit route that offers a preview of what fast, reliable bus service will be like for transit riders on Ashland Avenue. The Orange Line launched in 2005 as a 14-mile route through the San Fernando Valley, […]

Where Are the Bus Riders in the Atlantic Cities Piece on Ashland BRT?

By John Greenfield | Feb 28, 2014 | 11 Comments

On his blog City Pages, Daniel Hertz has an effective critique of yesterday’s Atlantic Cities piece on the Ashland bus rapid transit plan. The story by Matt Dellinger is a fairly standard “two sides to every story” report on the issue, giving roughly equal weight and credibility to the project’s advocates and opponents. And the piece […]

City Should Retain All Ashland Crosswalks in BRT Plan

By John Greenfield | Feb 11, 2014 | 26 Comments

View Larger Map Current plans for Ashland BRT call for a layout at unsignalized intersections similar to this design at Ashland/Ohio: a single crosswalk that passes through an opening in the median. I was recently talking about the city’s Ashland bus rapid transit plan with Joe Hall, owner of Quick Release Bike Shop, 1527 North Ashland, […]

Winters Stumbles on Transit Issues With Comments Bashing BRT

By John Greenfield | Feb 7, 2014 | 50 Comments

If you’re running for a Chicago political office and want to showcase your inadequate knowledge of local transportation issues, a great way to do it is to trash the city’s Ashland bus rapid transit plan. At a recent panel of candidates for state rep in the 10th district of Illinois’ House of Representatives, which includes […]

AWC Asks Aldermen to Take a Stand Against Effective Transit

By John Greenfield | Feb 4, 2014 | 27 Comments

Yesterday Roger Romanelli’s anti-bus rapid transit group the Ashland-Western Coalition made its most overtly political move to date. An email from the coalition urged members to lobby their aldermen to oppose the CTA’s plan, implying the AWC will campaign against politicians who support it. “The Chicago February 2015 election is ahead,” Romanelli wrote. “It’s time […]

Transpo Professionals: We Need Ashland BRT to Improve Access to Jobs

By John Greenfield | Jan 30, 2014 | 28 Comments

After old-school traffic engineer Tom Kaeser was featured in the Sun-Times for his ten-page letter to the CTA predicting the Ashland BRT plan could be “a dagger in the heart of Chicago,” we deconstructed his arguments, as did City Pages’ Daniel Hertz. Earlier this week, a quartet of heavy-hitters from the local transportation scene got […]

You Can’t Make a 21st Century City With a 1950s Approach to Streets

By John Greenfield | Jan 22, 2014 | 168 Comments

When I worked at the Chicago Department of Transportation’s bicycle program, from 2001 to 2006, it was a very different department than it is today. While there was an interest in improving conditions for walking, transit, and cycling, the city’s main transportation goal, as it had been for most of the previous century, was to […]

Walking and Talking About BRT With Ashland Bus Riders

By John Greenfield | Jan 17, 2014 | 17 Comments

[This piece also runs in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield’s transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the street in print on Wednesday evenings.] As I type this, it’s fourteen degrees in Chicago and snow is falling fast, but the battle over the future of Ashland Avenue is heating up. The city has put forth a […]