Wicker Park

Last night, a young woman driving out of a drug store parking lot struck and killed a female pedestrian in Wicker Park, according to Officer Janel Sedovic from News Affairs.

The Bloomingdale Trail is attracting new investment along its length, including the construction of new multi-family and single-family housing. The blocks bracketing the multi-use path and adjacent parks (collectively known as the 606) saw less construction than their wider neighborhoods during the 2008-2009 recession -- but now construction is picking up. Investors and developers are confidently saying that the 606 will not just be a great amenity for their customers, but a crucial transportation link as well.

For the past three months, #56 Milwaukee bus drivers have had a tough time picking up passengers, especially those with disabilities, from a temporary bus stop in the heart of Wicker Park.

On Thursday, Steven Vance and I got the news that the city was forcing a developer to fix a dangerous bottleneck on Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago’s busiest bike street, in Wicker Park. However, when I dropped by around 4:30 p.m. yesterday to check out the new street configuration, I found that the situation was as dysfunctional as ever.

Every Saturday night at dusk, the main streets in Wicker Park and Bucktown seize up. The stalled lines of cars don't just infuriate drivers -- they also stall buses, block crosswalks, and push cyclists into the dangerous door zone. These crowds don't descend out of nowhere to watch the sunset, or to pile into shows at the Double Door. No, this dangerous mess stems in large part from poorly managed public parking.

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab published an interactive map this week that shows a new way to measure access across Chicago via different transportation modes. Instead of assessing how far one can travel by a certain mode, like a previous online map has shown, or showing the cost of travel, this map looks solely at relative travel time across four modes.

Crews were out installing lane markings and bike symbols for a Wood Street bike route, running through Wicker Park, on Wednesday. They installed a contraflow bike lane on Wicker Park Avenue, which runs one-way westbound. The lane will allow for eastbound bicyclists to continue along Wood via a short diagonal jog via Wolcott Avenue and Wicker Park, and then back to Wood.

Last week I reported that the Belmont-Clark tower, located a block from a Red Line station, may include 90 rental units but only 39 parking spaces. A commenter scoffed, “Good luck renting those apartments when they run out of parking spaces.” However, the 1611 West Division rental tower, which opened last year next to the Division Blue Line stop, shows that new residential buildings near transit with little or, in this case, no tenant parking can be a big success.

The crash site. Image: Google Street View