Logan Square

The new Chicago Department of Transportation bike parking program manager, Kathleen Murphy, described the upcoming summer and fall installation season during the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council meeting two weeks ago. She outlined three initiatives that will get over a thousand new bicycle parking spaces installed on sidewalks and roadways.

Last weekend's Blue Line track work, just one week of the months-long Your New Blue project, pushed rail riders onto shuttle buses that ran along Milwaukee Avenue -- and right through a traffic jam created by the very same track work. Instead of following the designated detour, drivers diverted from Fullerton and Sacramento Avenues under the Blue Line piled onto Milwaukee Avenue and slowed buses to a crawl.

The chaotic traffic circle around Logan Square's eagle-topped Illinois Centennial Monument pillar is a major barrier for pedestrians, discouraging foot traffic from one side of the neighborhood to the other. As a result, the multilane roundabout lowers revenue for businesses along on Logan Boulevard, Milwaukee and Kedzie.

As the Chicago Transit Authority prepares to fix up Blue Line tracks, the agency is warning riders that they'll face significant delays during the weekends when work is underway. But tens of thousands of transit riders would face less inconvenience if the city cleared some room on Milwaukee Avenue by diverting motor vehicle traffic.

This week's snow storm -- which is still coming down -- has made a lot of sidewalks tough to navigate, but here's one case that's worse than most.

A proposal to legalize transit-oriented development would make it easier to build walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, in part by halving the car parking requirement for residences and eliminating it for non-residential uses near train stations. The ordinance is set to go before aldermen at the zoning committee's next meeting in September. Right now, without the ordinance, launching a new business that complies with Chicago's parking minimums can be a ludicrous ordeal. Here's what two business owners in Logan Square had to go through to get around their parking minimums.

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.

I’m getting really fed up with hearing about cyclists’ blood being spilled on Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, Bucktown and Logan Square from dooring crashes that might have been prevented by protected bike lanes.

Last Thursday at around 4:30 p.m., a driver crashed into a bicyclist returning from a quick trip to The Bike Lane, a bike shop on Milwaukee Avenue across from the Congress Theater. The driver fled the scene and remains at large, while the cyclist – Michael Leete, visiting from Brooklyn, New York – was left on the ground with bleeding around his brain. The driver may have been exiting or entering a parallel parking space near 2207 N Milwaukee Avenue.