South Chicago

The South Chicago Underline Project is a proposal to add facilities for walking, biking, playing, and relaxing under the Chicago Skyway, an elevated highway on the Southeast Side.

The South Chicago Velodrome Association recently announced that the city’s only bike racing track is probably going to lose its lease and cease operations. According to bike shop owner Marcus Moore, who has spearheaded recent efforts to keep the facility in the city, there’s still a glimmer of hope that the track can be saved. But this could only happen if landlord U.S. Steel agrees to relax terms of the lease, or else if opportunities arise to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars still owed to the velodrome’s manufacturer and/or find a new location for the portable facility.

For the second time, we’re in danger of losing the South Chicago Velodrome, the city’s only bike racing track, which also hosts youth education programs. Bike mechanic Marcus Moore, who spearheaded the campaign to save the track last year after its original owner gave up on running it, says he’s now getting burned out himself after spending countless unpaid hours on the revival effort.

The idea of Metra running its Hyde Park and South Chicago-bound Electric District line more like a CTA 'L' line may be gaining traction. If so, much of the credit goes to advocate Mike Payne, who has been tirelessly promoting the concept online and at public meetings. He calls this proposed rapid transit service as "The Gray Line," since that's one of the few colors that doesn't yet appear on the Chicago Transit Authority train map.

A dozen neighborhood organizations, along with the Active Transportation Alliance and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, are calling for the Metra Electric line, with its three branches that run through several South Side communities, to operate like a CTA 'L' line.

New Bikeways Week pedals ahead as we look at new and upgraded bike lanes all over the city. Yesterday I visited the Lakeside development in South Chicago to get a tour in anticipation of the grand opening of what's known as the South Lake Shore Drive extension. After that, I checked out 1.25 miles of upgraded bike lanes on a recently repaved section of South Shore Drive, a northwest-southeast diagonal road, between 71st and 79th streets.

Two of the biggest problems facing local youth, and Chicagoans in general, are street crime and the obesity epidemic, partly due to a lack of safe outdoor spaces for physical activity. PlayStreets, an initiative launched last year by the Chicago Department of Public Health, addresses both of those initiative by closing off city streets to traffic in low-income communities of color for three-hour intervals to create safe places to play.