Gabe Klein

When I visited Tokyo a few years ago, one my favorite aspects of the city was the "pedestrian scramble" intersections I encountered in the bustling Shinjuku and Shibuya neighborhoods. When the all-way walk signals activated, it was a thrill to see all motorized traffic come to a halt while what seemed like thousands of peds flooded the intersection. It seemed to send a message that people on foot are just as important as people in cars.

I’ve long considered the Chicago Tribune’s Jon Hilkevitch to be one of Chicago’s best transportation writers. He works fast, gets his numbers straight and often gets the scoop on important stories, usually writing from a pro-walking, biking and transit perspective. For example, I always enjoy re-reading a brilliant article he wrote back in 2005, skewering the Daley administration’s pro-car policies. I appreciate that he provides a level-headed foil to his colleague columnist John Kass, a notorious bike-baiter.

At last night’s community meeting at Intuit arts center, the Chicago Department of Transportation discussed its vision for innovative bike lanes on Milwaukee between Kinzie and Elston. The plan, which is actually much more ambitious than what was outlined on the CDOT website prior to the meeting, involves removing about half of the car-parking spaces along Milwaukee to make room for buffered and protected lanes on the entire segment. To really wrap your head around what's being proposed, be sure to check out the department's presentation on the plan.

When I interviewed Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein at the June 2012 Bike to Work Rally, shortly after it was announced that bike-share would probably not launch that year, he promised, “We’ll be launching bike-share in the next six to twelve months.” It now appears that the Chicago Department of Transportation and Alta Bike Share, the contractor in charge of running the system, are making good on Klein's promise.

[This piece also appears in Checkerboard City, John's weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

At a waterside press conference this afternoon with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, outgoing U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood promised that the roughly $100 million federal loan that will bankroll the Chicago Riverwalk will definitely be finalized by June. Earlier this winter the Chicago Department of Transportation sent LaHood’s agency a letter of interest for a loan through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance Innovation Act. Now the USDOT is inviting CDOT to submit a formal application for the loan, which will cover almost the entire project cost.

As Steven Vance wrote recently, protected bicycle lanes will be crucial for boosting Chicago’s bike mode share because they attract the “interested but concerned” set that doesn’t yet feel comfortable riding on city streets. But as the city installs protected lanes on roadways that are already popular bike routes, such as Milwaukee Avenue, it will be important to design and maintain the new lanes so that they appeal to current riders as well.

The quarterly Mayor’s Bike Advisory Council meetings, held on the 11th floor of City Hall, are an excellent way to get up to speed on local cycling initiatives. At Wednesday's meeting Mike Amsden, who manages the Chicago Department of Transportation’s bikeways projects, discussed the agency's proposal to build protected bike lanes on Milwaukee Avenue between Kinzie and Elston avenues, which would require parking removal. New on-street bike parking corrals, bike share kiosks and “People Spot” parklets might be part of the plan. “There are quite a few bars and restaurants, so we’ll be making sure, hey, if they’re losing a parking space they get a nice bike corral or a bike share station,” said CDOT Commissioner Gabe Klein.

Not surprisingly, Portland, Oregon, leads the nation in on-street bike parking corrals, with 97 installed since 2004 and about 20 more going in each year. San Francisco, which installed its first corrals on Valencia Street in May 2010, now has 32 of them. New York City, which began installing corrals in August 2011, currently has 12. But Chicago, which debuted its first on-street racks, in front of Wicker Park’s Flat Iron Building, a month before New York, only has four corrals so far, with a fifth slated for Logan Square’s Revolution Brewing this spring.