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For Some College Students, Ventra Rollout Begins Today
The Chicago Transit Authority's revenue director, Eric Reese, hosted a gaggle of reporters on Friday to show off the Ventra "outreach bus" and demonstrate, for the first time, a Ventra vending machine. Ventra is set to replace the current fare media for CTA and the Pace suburban bus system, including all passes, Chicago Card/Plus, and reduced fare cards. The new technology will enable faster boarding -- speeding up buses especially -- and lower the CTA's costs.
August 5, 2013
IDOT Still Has Time to Make Peoria Street Great
As part of the Circle Interchange project, the Illinois Department of Transportation will rebuild many of the bridges around the confluence of three highways. One of them is the Peoria Street bridge, a vital connection that links two college buildings and West Loop residences north of the Eisenhower Expressway to the University of Illinois at Chicago south of the highway.
July 19, 2013
Eyes on the Street: The Red Line Without Tracks
Friday will mark two months since the Chicago Transit Authority began overhauling and upgrading the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line. The reconstruction is quite visible: A little more than one month into the project, all of the tracks had been removed, and work on the stations was plain to see.
July 15, 2013
New York’s Experience Shows Ashland Bus Lanes Won’t Cause Carmaggedon
Converting a travel lane in each direction on Ashland Avenue to center-running bus lanes, greatly improving transit performance on the corridor, won't lead to Chicago's own version of Carmageddon (which actually never materialized).
May 23, 2013
Train in Vain: An Attempt to Win the ‘L’ Racing Crown Before the Red Rehab
[This article also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield's weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Wednesday evenings.]
May 20, 2013
Adapting Car-Share Ads to Market Bike-Share
On a recent trip on my "other bike," AKA the 'L,' I spotted two advertisements promoting Zipcar that could have easily been converted into advertisements for bike-share. Car-share and bike-share serve different purposes, but there's also some overlap -- car-share providers want to capture some trips that you could also make on a public bike. With Chicago's Divvy bike-share system set to launch soon, let's see whether we can adapt these Zipcar ads to the bike-share context.
May 7, 2013
Chicago to Pursue Center-Running Bus Rapid Transit on Ashland Avenue
After a year of study and outreach, today Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Transit Authority, and the Chicago Department of Transportation announced plans for center-running Bus Rapid Transit on Ashland Avenue. Once implemented, the project could set a national precedent for high-quality BRT, improving transit speeds as much as 80 percent during rush hour, according to today's announcement.
April 19, 2013
Ventra Will Be Anything But a Smooth “Retail Experience”
Editor's note: Streetsblog accepts guest posts with viewpoints different than our own. Lynn Stevens is an urban planner, blogger at Peopling Places, and long-time neighborhood booster for Logan Square where she’s been an active participant in Bike/Walk Logan Square, the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, the Logan Square Corridor Development Initiative, and the (now defunct) Zoning Advisory Committee.
March 28, 2013
You Might Already Be Ready to Use Ventra
Ventra, you may have heard, is the new fare payment system for Chicago Transit Authority and Pace. (Metra will not be joining the Ventra system, and is currently testing other fare payment methods.) CTA is switching to Ventra to save $5 million per year on maintaining outdated fare collection technology, according to spokesperson Lambrini Lukidis.
March 18, 2013
Eyes on the Street: The Bike Parking Fence Doesn’t Make Sense
Last week, the Chicago Transit Authority finished construction of a partially-sheltered bike parking area on Lunt Avenue under the viaduct at the Morse Red Line station. The area is well-lit but surrounded by a tall fence with a single opening, on the alley. Instead of making the bike parking area more secure, this fence may actually decrease the perception of safety here.
March 14, 2013