Promoted

By now you know the drill. The CTA announces that it's significantly increasing scheduled bus and/or train service in an effort to restore or surpass 2019 pre-COVID service levels. Streetsblog later asks the transit data whizzes at the grassroots transit advocacy group Commuters Take Action (CTAction) for their POV on the claim.

This week, Streetsblog Chicago ran my interview with longtime sustainable transportation advocate Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Vice President for Government Affairs Jacky Grimshaw, who happens to be my grandmother. She was being recognized by Climate Action Museum with its 2025 Tom Skilling Lifetime Achievement Award, so we discussed that honor. We also talked about her current mission urging State lawmakers to address Chicagoland's impending $770 million transit budget gap this spring, so as to avoid nightmarish service cuts next year.

Yesterday, Block Club Chicago's Alex V. Hernandez reported that the 4700 block Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Square community would be opened for car-free use starting Monday, for the next week. That's being done to accommodate construction work on Leland Avenue between Western Avenue and Lincoln, including a new plaza next to the Western Brown Line station and raised bike lanes. The latter will complete the long-awaited Leland Neighborhood Greenway, a lower-stress, mostly side-street bike route connecting the North Shore Channel Trail and the Lakefront Trail.

Plus a discussion of why at many Metra stations, if you're not a daily commuter, it can be maddeningly non-obvious which platform you need to wait on.

On Monday, April 7, at around 5:09 a.m. a pickup driver, 26, fatally struck a 72-year-old male pedestrian at the intersection of Roosevelt Road and DuSable Lake Shore Drive, just west of the Museum Campus. It was reported that the victim had been trying to cross the highway on foot, although it's illegal to do so there.

See the update about the new signs at the bottom of this post, originally published on April 16, 2025.

Back in January, A City That Works writer and Streetsblog Chicago contributor Richard S. Day discussed the benefits of a potential land use plan for Broadway in Uptown and Edgewater on this site. Harnessing the potential of the Red and Purple Modernization project, he wrote, the upzoning proposal would allow for more density and walkability on the 2.6 mile segment of Broadway between Devon and Montrose avenues.

Streetsblog obtained the crash report for the more serious of two recent bus-pedestrian collisions there, which provides more details about what reportedly happened.

• CPD: CTA employee, 24, fatally shot man, 61, during fight around 6 PM on pedestrian bridge near UIC/Halsted stop, halting Blue Line service (NBC)