Belmont Avenue

Bicycling up and over the Chicago River on Belmont, from Avondale to Roscoe Village, will soon be more comfortable once the Chicago Department of Transportation gives the street a "road diet" and replaces car travel lanes with new buffered bike lanes. Bicyclists shouldn't get too comfortable, though: Once they've crested the bridge eastbound, they'll be dropped into the middle of a six-lane highway. Yes, CDOT is narrowing Belmont from four lanes to two on one block, and then on the very next block widening Belmont to six lanes, while eliminating the bike lanes completely.

The Chicago Department of Transportation plans to tear down the structurally deficient 52-year-old viaduct that lifts traffic on Western Avenue over the intersection of Belmont and Clybourn. Instead of a gloomy concrete interchange walling off the edge of Roscoe Village, a more conventional surface-level intersection could be built as soon as 2016.

After several iterations since first being proposed last October, plans for a new building at Clark and Belmont in Lakeview were approved by the city’s Plan Commission on Thursday.

After Lakeview residents argued that a huge number of parking spaces was inappropriate for a building located only one block from a Red Line stop, the latest design for the Belmont-Clark tower is much less car-oriented. While the original design featured 100 rental units and 116 parking spots, the new one has 90 units but only 39 spots. That’s a major win for the community, since it will greatly reduce the amount of car traffic generated in this dense, transit-rich neighborhood.

There’s some mildly encouraging news about the mixed-use development proposed for the “Punkin’ Donuts” site at the northwest corner of Belmont and Clark. The latest design calls for fewer car parking spaces and more housing units.

By now you may have already seen this viral video of the world's most incompetent hit-and-run driver. After colliding with a taxi, the offending motorist performed something like an 11-point turn in an attempt to flee the scene, but traffic congestion on this part of Belmont Avenue, between Southport and Greenview, stalled the getaway. The driver struck four other vehicles in succession, bumper-car style, before speeding away. It's a wonder there was no further harm to bystanders or public property, though the driver apparently ran into a tree soon afterwards.