IDOT

IDOT finally lifted the curtain off its Transit and Managed lanes concepts for the North Lake Shore Drive reconstruction project.

An annoying issue on Elston has a silver lining -- it suggests that protected bike lanes could work on this stretch.

This information is crucial for identifying hotspots for collisions and other trends that can better inform the fight against serious and fatal crashes.

A presentation at last week’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council meeting indicates that the city has made some progress on the plan and we should be seeing the fruits of their labor soon.

The state’s refusal to release SOCC funds for the 41st Street bike-ped bridge and other initiatives is completely counterproductive because it could result in overall higher construction costs.

The state, which has jurisdiction over the five-lane highway, is refusing to lift a finger to improve pedestrian safety, or even let the village make its own changes.

Four years of data on reported dooring crashes in Chicago show a decrease from 2011, when the data started being collected by the state, to 2014, the most recent year for which crash data has been released. A dooring crash occurs when someone in a car opens their door into moving traffic without looking, resulting in a collision with a bicyclist.

Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report showing that all traffic fatalities increased significantly on U.S. roads from 2014 to 2015, by 7.7 percent to reach 35,200, the worst death toll since the 2008 economic crash. Streetsblog USA's Angie Schmitt pointed out that, while Americans drove 3.5 percent more during this period, that's "not enough to explain the rising death toll." U.S. pedestrian and bike fatalities rose even more during that period, by 10 and 15 percent, respectively.

Last week, the Illinois Department of Transportation hosted the first public meeting on the North Lake Shore Drive reconstruction project in almost a year and a half. This state-jurisdiction road, which is located entirely within the city limits, currently restricts access to our lakefront. And since CTA "express" buses are forced to share travel lanes with cars, the buses are slowed to a crawl during peak-hour traffic jams.