Steven can plan » Walking

Non-auto construction projects in Chicago

Steven Vance — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:30:00 +0000

There are 17 construction projects listed here and none are about automobiles. Additionally, there is information about 2 studies for bus rapid transit-like projects.

Download all of these into Google Earth with this KML file. Links to maps coming soon.

A couple of these projects are being held up by the current Illinois roadway construction workers’ strike. UPDATE: Apparently a deal has been reached to end the strike.

Streetscapes

Blue Island/Cermak – I wrote about this project at length in October 2009. Construction should begin as soon as the strike is resolved. Map.
Congress Parkway – Full details and renderings from CDOT (PDF). Project should begin in 2010 and will narrow lanes, reduce number of lanes, straighten lanes (no more mid-intersection lane shifts), widen sidewalks, and improve crosswalks. Will add a lot of landscaping and unique and decorative lighting. Map.
PROPOSED: Lawrence Avenue between Ashland and Western. Reduce the number of travel lanes from four to three, adding bike lanes and a center turn lane. Project limits include the rebuilt Ravenswood Metra station at 1800 W Lawrence. More details on Center Square Journal. Construction wouldn’t begin until 2011.

Transit

Morgan/Lake Green and Pink Line CTA station (new) – Details and renderings from CDOT (PDF) – Overview from Chicago Transit Authority – Tons of bike parking included at the beginning, how it should be. Construction should start this year. To better serve the West Loop area, where more people are moving to, but also has lots of existing businesses. Map.
State/Grand Red Line CTA station renovation – Construction should finish this year. Map.
35th/Federal Rock Island Metra station (new) – Construction started in 2010. Map.
LaSalle/Congress Intermodal Center – To improve connection between buses and the LaSalle Metra station. Mentioned in the Congress Parkway streetscape presentation (PDF). Map.
Wilson Red Line CTA station renovation – Down the street from a new Target store that opens this weekend and hundreds of brand new housing units in the Wilson Yard development. Will use TIF funds from the Wilson Yard district. Overview on CTA Tattler. Map.
Ravenswood Metra Station – A popular station on the Union Pacific-North line (to Kenosha). Will add longer and sheltered platform and become accessible. Details with Chicago Square Journal.
FLOATING: New Green Line CTA station at 18th or Cermak. Roosevelt station serves three lines. South Loop neighborhood fast growing. The new station would improve transit access to McCormick Place (at least if built at Cermak). Follow the Chicago Journal for more news on this topic. Map.

Rendering from the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) showing context-sensitive design. See the full presentation (PDF) for architectural influences.

Bridges

Halsted Street over North Branch Canal of the Chicago River. Replaces 99-year old moveable span with fixed span. No information on how it will accommodate the Halsted Street bike lane. Construction to begin in 2010 (PDF). Map.
Navy Pier Flyover – Elevated section of the Lakefront Trail to bypass current bottleneck where the Lakefront Trail currently enters the Lake Shore Drive bridge over the Chicago River and DuSable park. Details from CDOT presentation on July 15, 2010. Map.
PROPOSED: 35th Street pedestrian bridge over Metra/Illinois Central tracks and Lake Shore Drive to lakefront and Lakefront Trail. Bridge will be self-anchored suspension, like the new Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco. Overview on Burnham Centennial (drawing says 2007). Map.

Watch Randy Neufeld's complete presentation."/>

Rendering of the Navy Pier Flyover as it travels over the Lakepoint Tower condominiums as seen at the Cities and Bicycles forum with David Byrne in June at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Other

Various CREATE projects. All CREATE projects involve railroads in some way and most projects will construct grade separations. I’ve written about CREATE.
The Chicago Park District opened a new beach at Oakwood/41st Street this year. The grand opening for the beach house happened this past Saturday.
The Chicago Park District is currently building a harbor and marina immediately south of the 31st Street beach. The Public Building Commission of Chicago has the details and renderings. AECOM, the architect of record, produced these concept drawings (PDF). It appears how bike riders currently navigate the intersection at the entrance to the beach will change to be a little more normal and not force bike riders on the sidewalk. It’s unclear how many new parking spaces are being created along the lakefront – the fewer the better. The concept plan shows a new parking lot on the west side of the railroad tracks, a design I wholly support.
FLOATING: Luann Hamilton mentioned at the Cities and Bicycles forum with David Byrne in June that CDOT was thinking about a buffered bike lane on Wells Street.

Rendering of the 31st Street harbor concept plan. As seen in the contractor’s presentation to the Public Building Commission of Chicago.

Although not construction projects, two additional proposals merit your attention. The Chicago Department of Transportation and the Chicago Transit Authority each received grants this month to study and develop two corridors with bus rapid transit-like features. CDOT’s plan is to develop a priority bus lanes for up to seven routes between the Metra stations and Navy Pier and North Michigan Avenue (the Miracle Mile). Thank you to Kevin Z for the update.

CTA’s grant money is to fund the development of a speedy bus service from the southeast side to the West Loop via the north-south Jeffrey Avenue.

Washington, D.C.

Steven Vance — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:20:27 +0000

Washington, D.C., is where laws and funding decisions are made that affect our daily lives. We would be smart to pay attention to news that comes from here.

Photo by Jonathan Maus of BikePortland.org. “Gary Fisher telling US DOT Sec. Ray LaHood (and I paraphrase), ‘Look at this turnout… look at all these people here supporting bikes!’ “

Yesterday, Ray LaHood (Secretary of the Department of Transportation), fresh from his “tabletop speech” at the National Bike Summit, announced a big change in federal transportation funding and project selection policy.

The United States DOT says in “Policy Statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation Regulations and Recommendations” that the recommended actions were created based on already existing law and regulations.

I hope this policy change has the authority of your mom telling you not to eat cookies because she made them for a neighbor – and if you do get a couple, you’ll see the consequences in the form of a wooden spoon.

Why should we be “Collecting data on walking and biking trips”? Well, we might get the wooden spoon if we don’t, but “Communities that routinely collect walking and bicycling data are able to track trends and prioritize investments to ensure the success of new facilities.”

The document does remind readers that the Secretary (or more likely, his designee, a project reviewer) “has the authority to withhold approval for projects that would negatively impact pedestrians and bicyclists under certain circumstances.”

Found via Active Transportation Alliance. More photos.

Paths of least resistance, part two

Steven Vance — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:37:28 +0000

On the same day I wrote about “paths of least resistance” in a “Tuesday Roundup,” linking to a post on Discovering Urbanism, Boing Boing posted about “pathways of desire,” referencing this article on Sweet Juniper about the walking paths found after the snow is gone in Detroit.

From Sweet Juniper: “Gaston Bachelard called these les chemins du désir: pathways of desire. Paths that weren’t designed but eroded casually away by individuals finding the shortest distance between where they are coming from and where they intend to go.”

Seen on my blog."/>

Photo: In 2006 I went on a tour of Chicago via a chartered Chicago Transit Authority train. Part of the tour traveled along the Green Line. From above, you can see many of the trails people paved. Using Google Maps’ satellite imagery, I took a screen capture of 50th Street and King Drive and marked all of the unofficial walking paths I could see.

And, “it is an urban legend on many college campuses that many sidewalks and pathways were not planned at all, but paved by the university after students created their own paths from building to building, straying from those originally prescribed.”

path of least resistance decide where students walk, Universities build diagonal walkways to keep them off the grass. This is looking northeast. Seen on my blog."/>

Photo: From the top of University Hall, you can see all of the constructed diagonal paths surrounding the quad on the University of Illinois at Chicago’s East Campus. You can see at least four cemented “pathways of desire” in the photo.

You may also know these footpaths as “intention lines.”

Photo: A worn path or intention line through the snow in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Photo by Richard Akerman.

We’re all pedestrians

Steven Vance — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:45:13 +0000

Martha Gonzalez was killed by a hit-and-run driver five minutes before I arrived at the scene. I’m not a firefighter, police officer, or EMT; I commute by bike on the same road Martha walks on. Sometimes I also walk on Halsted.

We’re all pedestrians.

writing about jaywalking on Slate. My title is modeled after Streetsblog's "The Weekly Carnage" posts that list all the collisions and deaths involving motor vehicles."/>

Flyer in neighborhood with photo of Martha offering $5,000 reward to information that leads to conviction of driver. The driver has not been found and video footage, if available, has not been released (a traffic camera was in view of the collision location).

What has happened to “pedestrianism” in the past four months? A lot. While some of the news items below may not describe situations in which a walking person was directly affected, they describe issues that affect vulnerable street users.

8/1 – Driving while texting (DWT) is found to be twice as dangerous as conversing on a mobile phone while driving.
9/30 -Distracted Driving Summit in Washington, D.C., convened by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to discuss the dangers of driving distractions including text-messaging.
10/1 – President Barack Obama issues an executive order that bans Federal employees from texting while driving a government vehicle, or a private vehicle on government business, or using a government-issued device.
10/28 – SAFETEA-LU, legislation that controls pedestrian and bicycling project funding, extended once again, this time until December 18. Congressperson James Oberstar has been trying all summer to get the House to discuss his proposed reauthorization of the six-year surface transportation bill.
11/1 – A British judge sends a young driver to 21 months in jail for texting while driving and killing the occupant of a vehicle she collided into from behind. Sentence based on law passed in February 2008 that considers “prolonged texting” a factor in “death by dangerous driving.”
11/9 – Transportation for America calls Orlando, Florida the most dangerous city for pedestrians. Via Streetsblog.
11/10 – Active Transportation Alliance talks to police and 25th Ward representatives at 18th/Halsted (where Martha was hit) about street design and lax laws. Alderman Danny Solis’ new website reports on the upcoming intersection updates.

And finally, between October 13 and November 1, six Chicagoans died while doing what we all do: being pedestrians.

The automobile assault on pedestrians occurs daily

Steven Vance — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:51:06 +0000

More Park Avenue Motorist Mayhem
Originally uploaded by bicyclesonly

Transportation for America reports 400 pedestrians killed each month. Thankfully, no pedestrians were hurt in the collision you see here.

More of you need to carry cameras around to document this travesty. You’ve seen my photos. Where’re yours?

Watch for my article on pedestrian safety coming on Friday (I wrote it a month ago, but the information and message isn’t late).

Midtown Greenway at Chicago Avenue in MPLS

Steven Vance — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:51:05 +0000

Midtown Greenway – Chicago Avenue ramp
Originally uploaded by stevevance

Open space advocates and planners should investigate the development, design, and construction of the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Greenway opened up acres of green space to residents, and created new spaces, like this ramp to the multi-use trail between Chicago and 11th Avenues.

Sorry, I won’t do the research for you, because the bicycling facilities component of the multi-use trail and corridor interest me more. Start here: http://www.midtowngreenway.org/

I will continue sharing photos of my trip to “trail city.”

GIS and mapping tools

Steven Vance — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:36:14 +0000

www.stevevance.net/planning/. I'm somewhat of a noob at using ArcGIS and I couldn't even figure out how to make a legend. The blue paths are Metra lines, the red paths are CTA lines, the orange paths are recommended bike routes, the orange with purple stroke are bike lanes, and the purple paths are trails. The pink circles are Metra stations, the blue squares and green triangles are CTA stations. Sorry, I can't tell you what it's for :)"/>

Some of the work I do for school and my job requires that I make maps. I’ve never taken a class on how to make maps or analyze data sets featured in maps (what GIS does), so I learn as I go.

There’s no one around me I can call upon when I have questions that need immediate answers. Well, there’s me! Because of this, I must quickly find a solution or workaround myself.

Today I had to import a list of Chicago Transit Authority and Metra rail stations into ArcGIS so I could plot them on a map that also showed Chicago’s boundary and our bikeways. I could do this in Google Earth, but then I would have less control over the printed map I wanted to make, or the image output. ArcGIS has a built-in geocoder and I learned how to use it six months ago, but a skill not practiced is lost – and I forgot how to do it.

That’s okay – what follows is how I overcame this barrier:

Because I know how to use PHP to instantly create Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files (the format which Google Earth and Maps speaks fluently). Then, with this user-contributed KML to SHP plugin for ArcGIS, I was able to convert my KML files to Shapefiles and display them on my map. Unfortunately, my custom “fancy” icons were lost in the translation. Supposedly this alternate user-contributed script does the same thing.

Other tools I used to get my map created:

BatchGeocode.com – This site is indispensable for turning a list of addresses (with names, descriptions, and URLs) into the same list but with latitude and longitude coordinates! It will even create a KML file for you.
KML Generator (PHP class) – This class allows you to quickly and easily create KML files from any array and array source of coordinates. I store the transit stations in a database and run a query on the database and loop through them to generate the points in a KML file.

I’d like to thank James Fee’s GIS Blog for the links to the ArcGIS scripts/plugins I used in my project. To everyone else who must confront software, technology and mapping roadblocks, there’s almost always a solution for you.

Read about how I got around QGIS’s lack of geocoding.

Living close by

Steven Vance — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:24:48 +0000

The 20-Minute Rule:

The common thread in communities that are now drawing the entrepreneurial, 25-40-year-olds, says University of Michigan architecture and urban design professor Christopher B. Leinberger, is walkable urbanism. “From an urban planning point of view it means a place where, within a quarter-mile to a half-mile radius, you can get pretty much everything you need and maybe even walk to work,” said Leinberger.

For myself, I chose to live in Pilsen on 18th St. because it is 1.0 miles away from most campus classrooms and only 0.7 miles away from my work. My housing is not central to these locations, but south of each – still an awesome place to be situated.What would happen if my work changed and I was further than 0.7 miles? Thankfully, I’m very adept at bicycling throughout the city and would not be hindered by increased distance. I would also consider moving to a new apartment.UPDATE: A similar urban planning topic is “constant travel budget hypothesis” which states that a person will either change their transportation mode or travel distance to maintain consistent travel costs.