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The statewide bicycle advocacy organization recently announced its “Our Response to Fatal Crashes” campaign, an effort to raise awareness of the traffic violence crisis across Illinois.

Hopefully the city will take action to address geographic discrepancies, so all Chicagoans can reap the safety, health, and economic benefits of car-free streets.

The Chicago Transit Authority released a major study today, the next step in the developing project to extend the Red Line southward from the 95th Street terminal to 130th Street in the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood. The Environmental Impact Study is required by the federal government before the CTA can ask for funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Milwaukee Avenue is Chicago’s busiest biking street, with as many as 5,000 bike trips a day during the high season, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation, with most of that cycling taking place between Logan Square and the Loop. But the Blue Line corridor is becoming an increasingly popular place to live, and we’re seeing transit-oriented development proposals in neighborhoods like Avondale, Portage Park, Old Irving Park, and Jefferson Park. As more car-free and car-lite residents settle further northwest along Milwaukee, bike traffic is going to increase on stretches of the road that are farther from the Loop.

Evanston installed new protected bike lanes on Dodge Avenue from Howard Street to Lake Street last month, and already some residents are complaining that the lanes have made it unsafe to park their cars. But these fears are unfounded because Chicago has had protected lanes with a nearly identical design for five years.

New ridership numbers for the Chicago Transit Authority's 'L' stations show some interesting changes over the past 17 years. The increases in ridership at some stations have been obvious, but the decreases at other stations are a little surprising.

Last week, Yonah Freemark and I published a new map called Transit Explorer, which shows all of the new transit projects that are under construction, or being planned, across United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Last Thursday, the Chicago City Council passed a transit-oriented development reform ordinance that dramatically more than doubles the distance around train stations where dense development can be built, and virtually eliminates the car parking minimums within these districts. The new legislation amends the city's original TOD ordinance, which passed in 2013 and has been highly successful in spurring new building projects.

Cedar Street Cos., the company behind the FLATS Chicago developments, which typically involve converting single-room occupancy buildings to more upscale rental units, has proposed two new apartment buildings near the Wilson 'L' station in Uptown.