Category: Chicago

No more drive throughs, please

March 12, 2012 / / 0 Comments

People drive their cars in and out of the parking lot for Micro Center, Joann Fabrics, and other stores in this strip mall on Elston Avenue. This design is almost inherently unfriendly to bicycle and walking transportation. But it doesn’t have to be. 

One reason that makes dense, urban areas pleasant and pleasurable is their walkability, variations in land uses, and architectural designs. When you walk down Belmont Street at Sheffield and encounter a new business or restaurant every 25 feet, you’re interested. Interested and curious in what others are doing, what new food you can eat, or what you will experience.

Photo of Belmont Street shopping and graffiti by Oscar Arriola. 

The opposite of this is Elston Avenue, between Ashland and Western Avenues. This stretch is marked by curb cuts, driveways, and seas of parking. Add in the lack of a bus route or nearby ‘L’ station, and you’ve got an environment that’s downright hostile to users of sustainable transportation modes.

I am still doing research for my article on the “pedestrian street” designation. In my research, I’ve learned a lot about the Zoning Board of Appeals, Special Use Permits, and drive throughs. I still haven’t been able to locate studies or reports about the effects drive throughs have on traffic or neighborhoods.

Just in the past 5 days, I’ve found out about the following news:

  1. The McDonald’s at Western Avenue and Milwaukee Avenue (1951 N Western Avenue) is seeking a special use permit. For what, I don’t know. It could just be a rumor. This is the same McDonald’s whose drive through someone so desperately needed to access and almost hit me with their SUV (see image below).
  2. Nodarse Family, LLC, is seeking a special use permit at 1646-1663 N Western Avenue for “the establishment of a one-lane drive-thru facility to serve a proposed 1-story restaurant”.

When I look at Street View for the 1646-1663 N Western location I see several homes and an empty lot with a car parked in it. The address seems to be a mistake, as 1663 is across the street. And even though this is a residential area, it’s zoned B3-2*.

In Mayor Emanuel’s “interest” (more like a selective, here not there, interest) for transparency, I’d like to see information that’s easier to find and process. For news from Zoning Board of Appeals, a blog-like website that lists all permits being considered and permits recently issued would be very helpful. I could subscribe via RSS and get notified of special use applications.

What’s a special use permit?

A special use permit is needed when the developer doesn’t have the right to build something that requires a special use permit. Like establishments for day laborers. Or drive throughs. Or businesses that sell liquor. Or a pawn shop. Speaking of pawn shops, Nodarse Family, LLC, owns the property 2826 N Milwaukee, for which the owner is seeking a special use permit to open one. This is in the 35th Ward, the same ward whose Alderman seems to have it out to build as much parking as can be built. You can see these applications on the ZBA’s agendas.

I’m not a fan of drive throughs.

B3-2: “Community shopping – destination oriented, no limit on size of commercial establishment. Allows dwelling units above ground floor.”

Google Maps is annoying sometimes

March 11, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I was looking up traffic counts on the Chicago Traffic Tracker website and saw that the Halsted Street bridge over the Chicago River just north of Chicago Avenue is missing. It’s shown as a gray line with the text “Halsted Street (planned)”.

This is not the most accurate message. The west side sidewalk is still open to foot and bicycle transportation, as I pointed out in my Grid Chicago article, The Halsted Passage. I wonder how it got in there.

I’ll report this as a problem, but I’m wary of it actually being updated to show that people on foot can still cross the river here. I’ve used Google Maps’s Map Maker tool once, and I didn’t like the experience. My correctly-made adjustment of a street was questioned and I was asked to revert my change. I refused and eventually my change was approved… because it was correct. I guess that someone used Map Maker to (incorrectly) modify the street at this part. This street segment in Map Maker should be designated something close to a “pedestrian walkway” instead of a bridge for automobile, bus, and bicycle traffic.

The Google Maps walking directions for walking from Division Street to Chicago Avenue don’t show the option of using the sidewalk, which is entirely possible (I did it again this week).

Why food and drinks cost more downtown

February 27, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority is a quasi-governmental body created by the Illinois legislature, similarly to how it created the Chicago Transit Authority. The authority is also known as McPier. McPier is able to add 1% sales tax to the sale of food and drinks in three areas in Chicago, apparently to support the operations of Navy Pier (a place I avoid) and McCormick Place. I’m writing this post because of an article I read on Crain’s Chicago Business about Chicago having the highest restaurant tax rate that failed to describe the area in question.

The main area is downtown, although the boundaries extend far beyond downtown. I first came encountered the tax as a manager of the Jamba Juice at 1322 S Halsted Street (at Maxwell Street) in the University Village development on UIC’s south campus. The other two areas encompass Midway (MDW) and O’Hare airports (ORD). I haven’t mapped them to see exactly how much land beyond the airports the areas encompass.

The downtown area is described in 70 ILCS 210, section 13, as follows:

(b) (3) that portion of the City of Chicago located within the following area: Beginning at the point 150 feet west of the intersection of the west line of North Ashland Avenue and the north line of West Diversey Avenue, then north 150 feet, then east along a line 150 feet north of the north line of West Diversey Avenue extended to the shoreline of Lake Michigan, then following the shoreline of Lake Michigan (including Navy Pier and all other improvements fixed to land, docks, or piers) to the point where the shoreline of Lake Michigan and the Adlai E. Stevenson Expressway extended east to that shoreline intersect, then west along the Adlai E. Stevenson Expressway to a point 150 feet west of the west line of South Ashland Avenue, then north along a line 150 feet west of the west line of South and North Ashland Avenue to the point of beginning.

View Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority boundaries in a larger map. I created this map by following the directions in the block quoted text above. Do not use this map to determine if your business is required to collect and remit the McPier tax. It’s not an accurate map: I didn’t measure 150 feet from any street line – I guessed.

Also interesting: all drinks (alcoholic and sodas) and food sold on boats that arrive at or depart Lake Michigan shores within the area described above are subject to the tax. And more interesting is that sales at stores whose principal income is from drinks (alcoholic and sodas) and food for off-site but immediate consumption are also subject to the tax. You can supply the Illinois Department of Revenue with your sales tax information.

I like what Bonnie McGrath said in the Chicago Journal last year:

Is this fair? Why should we South Loopers–not to mention the other neighborhoods near downtown–have to pay extra for restaurant food? What exactly are we getting that other Chicago residents don’t get that we have to pay an extra tax?

I’d also like to know why McPier needs additional revenue to supplement the millions (maybe billions?) it revenue it receives from vendor fees, events, rents, and other sources in the operation of Navy Pier and McCormick Place.

McPier also gets a cut of hotel room bookings.

Data collection issues in police database design

February 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Please don’t park on sucker (er, sign) poles. And use a good lock. When your bike is stolen, no one but you will care. And the police won’t even know. 

When I asked the Chicago Police Department for statistics on how many bicycles are reported stolen each year, the response was that statistics couldn’t be provided because the database can’t be filtered on “bicycle theft”. I called the police officer responding to my FOIA request to learn more. He said that bike thefts are only categorized as “property thefts under $300” or “property thefts over $300”.

It would be possible to search through the database using keywords, but that would have been an unreasonable use of the officer’s and department’s time in accordance with FOIA laws (FOIA meaning Freedom of Information Act, known as FOIL in other states).

What a poorly designed database.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has Uniform Crime Reporting standards that police departments nationwide voluntarily adopt. It’s mainly a way for the FBI to collect statistics across the country and I assume this program is necessary because of a state’s right to impose its own standards. That sounds fine by me, but it shouldn’t impede collecting data to assist the Department of Transportation, and the Police Department itself, to combat bike theft. The Bike 2015 Plan, released in 2005 and adopted by the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council (MBAC), includes several strategies to reduce bike theft in Chicago.

The FBI has a standard reporting code for bike thefts: 6Xf. Its definition is “the unlawful taking of any bicycle, tandem bicycle, unicycle, etc.”

The Chicago Police Department should upgrade its database to code property theft of bicycles as a “bike theft”. For now, though, advocates and activists will have to rely on the homegrown Chicago Stolen Bike Registry*. If you don’t know the extent of the problem, it’ll be hard to develop any solution.

The Bike 2015 Plan called for a report, by 2006, to be written that determined the “amount and types of bike theft”. We’re in 2012 – where’s that report?

Thinking about New York City

New York City’s Police Department (NYPD) has similar, but more grievous, database problems. Right now the New York City Council is holding a hearing to figure out why the NYPD isn’t investigating reckless drivers who’ve killed people walking and cycling. And I read this about it:

 Vacca’s first question to Deputy Chief John Cassidy, the NYPD Chief of Transportation, was about speeding, and how often drivers caught speeding are charged with reckless endangerment. The answer came not from Cassidy, but from Susan Petito, an NYPD attorney, who politely explained that they simply don’t know, because reckless endangerment charges “are not segregated in the database” and can’t be easily found. Via Gothamist.

Hmm, seems like the same issue the Chicago Police Department has.

* The Stolen Bike Registry has its own issues, which is often because of “user error”, wherein people who submit reports to it don’t provide much detail, especially as from where the bike was stolen.

A before shot of Chicago’s first bike boulevard, and facility semantics

February 5, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It looks like nothing now. It’s just a street with mixed one-way and two-way segments. The bike boulevard’s best idea is making it two-way for bicycling. One-way streets are annoying, especially to people new to the neighborhood (like when visiting friends). The route is Berteau Avenue, the site of the first bike boulevard, from Lincoln Avenue on the west to Clark Street on the east (dead ending at Graceland Cemetery).

Article updated February 6, 2012, 11:30, to add photo of Portland bioswale. 

Berteau Avenue - future bike boulevard

The eastern “entrance” to the bike boulevard.

CDOT is calling it instead a “neighborhood greenway”. I don’t know what’s so “greenway” about it, even after John’s interview with Mike Amsden of CDOT for Grid Chicago. Portland and Seattle have very specific stormwater management features built into their neighborhood greenways, so the names make more sense there. Chicago has a stormwater mismanagement feature: Deep Tunnel (or TARP; see more articles I wrote), where we are trying to build ourselves out of flooding. But it’s not possible. During every major rain storm we have to open the sewers and dump untreated stormwater and sewage into Lake Michigan. Many beaches close the next day.

A real bioswale

A bioswale in Portland, at the corner of SE Clay Street and SE 12th Avenue, collects water runoff from the street and sidewalks. The plants in the bioswale absorb the water they can; other water is cleaned and absorbed into the soil where it slowly enters the earth. The earth is probably the only underground reservoir we need. 

I understand the idea behind removing “bike” from the facility’s name, as the project is about traffic calming and making it safer and smoother for all transportation modes to maneuver on this street. That’s fine, but I’m hoping for bioswales and other features to be included in this facility.

Berteau Avenue - future bike boulevard

Berteau Avenue probably needs some new asphalt before the bike boulevard (or “neighborhood greenway” is developed).

This photo reminds me to ask CDOT if a repaving is part of the project. I presume it will be because it’s very dumb to install new pavement markings on bad pavement (but it happened at least once last year, on Armitage Avenue east of Western Avenue).

Berteau Avenue - future bike boulevard

Courtenay School, which is on Berteau Avenue

I agree with the notion that streets with schools receive a higher priority than streets without, but I don’t think they should be weighted higher than streets with high bicycling volume or crashes (I don’t know exactly if there’s such a detailed weighting system in the bikeway planning section of the Chicago Bicycle Program).

Berteau Avenue - future bike boulevard

A Brown Line train passes an office building

There’s at least one building with active businesses on the route. This one has the EveryBlock headquarters inside.

Berteau Avenue - future bike boulevard

Regional rail trains pass here

Metra is rebuilding tens of viaducts on the Union Pacific North line, including this one over Berteau. Not all the streets have underpasses so Berteau was a natural choice as an east-west route in the neighborhood because of this barrier.

I took all of these photos with a Panasonic GH1, and accompanying lens, a LUMIX G 20/f1.7mm.

More discussion on this is in the comments below, on The Chainlink, on Grid Chicago, and on EveryBlock.