Bucktown

During last week's Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council meeting Chicago Department of Transportation staffers shared a number of updates on the city's bike network.

As I’ve written, it’s a shame that the valuable riverfront land at the southeast corner of Fullerton and Damen will likely be redeveloped as big box retail with tons of parking in the aftermath of a project to reroute Elston Avenue so it bypasses that intersection. The silver lining of the project is that this new, curving five-lane stretch of Elston, which opened to motorized traffic last week, will have curb-protected bike lanes.

[The Chicago Reader recently launched a new weekly transportation column written by Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield. This partnership will allow Streetsblog to extend the reach of our livable streets advocacy. We’ll be syndicating a portion of the column on the day it comes out online; you can read the remainder on the Reader’s website or in print. The paper hits the streets on Thursdays.]

Located just north of a Blue Line station, the North/Damen/Milwaukee junction is the epicenter of the Wicker Park and Bucktown shopping district and one of the busiest locations in town for foot and bicycle traffic. But it's also one of the city's most dysfunctional intersections in terms of traffic management.

Yesterday, the Chicago Plan Commission approved River North-based developer Vequity's proposal for a new transit-oriented development in Bucktown. This puts the plan for a six-story building with 44 units and ten car parking spaces at 1920 N. Milwaukee Ave. on track for approval by the full City Council. However, it didn't happen without a heated debate about the lack of on-site affordable housing in the project.

A proposal for a transit-oriented development in Bucktown is going before the Chicago Plan Commission for approval this Thursday. River North-based developer Vequity wants to build a six-story residential tower with minimal parking at the southeast corner of Milwaukee and Western avenues in Bucktown, right next door to the Western stop on the Blue Line's O'Hare branch.

For two weeks now, 16 young adults have been walking back and forth on the Bloomingdale Trail, talking to trail users about the features of The 606 trail-and-park system, and providing etiquette tips. The new 606 Ambassadors come from neighborhoods near the trail, including West Humboldt Park and Austin.

Divvy and the Chicago Department of Transportation quietly launched a new bike-share station suggestion map yesterday. The new version features design and speed improvements (both versions were built by the software division at OpenPlans, Streetsblog's parent non-profit).

Although Chicago was one of the first U.S. cities to consider staging a ciclovía, a Latin-American-style event that creates temporary car-free street space in order to encourage healthy recreation, community interaction and commerce, we’re currently way behind peer cities. New York, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco are each hosting several ciclovía events this year on routes that are several miles long. Meanwhile Chicago will be hosting one event, called Open Streets, on Sunday, September 15, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., on a 2.6-mile stretch of Milwaukee Avenue between Division Street and Kedzie Boulevard in Wicker Park, Bucktown and Logan Square.