complete streets

Last week a ward staffer provided me with a preview of plans for the Lincoln/Ashland/Belmont reconstruction project. From what I gathered from that conversation, the Chicago Department of Transportation was planning a relatively conservative redesign of one of the North Side’s most dangerous intersections.

The six-way intersection of Belmont, Ashland, and Lincoln in Lakeview is one of the most confusing and scariest intersections on the North Side, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets. One year after some progressive civil engineers around the country feared a crackdown against new-fangled street and signal designs, the opposite seems to be taking place. The obscure but powerful National Committee on … Continued

Vincennes Avenue, which runs southwest from the 69th Street Red Line to the city limits, is one of the bike-priority Spoke Routes identified in the City's Streets for Cycling Plan 2020. Vincennes already had conventional bike lanes running from the train stop to 76th, and protected and buffered lanes from 84th to 103rd.

In an extraordinarily sad irony, the engineer in charge of Columbus, Ohio's complete streets program has been gravely injured in a car crash. His 21-year-old intern was killed.

Last year, the City of Evanston started work on a 2014 Bicycle Plan Update [PDF], envisioning further improvements in its cycling infrastructure. The previous bicycle plan, adopted in 2003, resulted in 38 miles of bicycle facilities and a marked increase in bicycle ridership. The new plan will bring a new focus on "comfortable bike corridors" along Evanston's major streets, like Howard, Emerson, Greenleaf, Lincoln, Harrison, and Central -- and along the intersecting side streets of Hinman, Chicago, Maple, Orrington and Crawford. The city estimates the construction cost of these comfortable corridors at $4 million, and hopes that funding will come from the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program or other state and federal grant programs.

Just a few months ago, Denver opened its first protected bike lane on 15th Street. But was that a one-off project or will the Mile High City change the way it designs streets citywide?

Harrison Street is often used by many bicyclists as a stealth route, particularly since it has one of the rare bridges without open metal grates, sees surprisingly light car traffic, and is the only east-west route that connects the South Loop and UIC. Harrison is marked as a "crosstown bike route" from Loomis Avenue (1400 W) to Michigan Avenue (200 E) in the Streets for Cycling Plan 2020, so it's due for an upgrade.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has a rare clean-slate opportunity to design a Street of Dreams -- a street that incorporates many leading-edge safety features. That opportunity is phase three of their Wells-Wentworth Connector between Chinatown and the South Loop, a future southward extension of Wells Street that longtime South Loop resident Dennis McClendon calls "Riverside Boulevard."