Category: Chicago

Draft letter to my Alderman about the TSA

November 18, 2010 / / 0 Comments

To my readers: I am concerned about transportation security in the United States. I am concerned that it grossly oversteps boundaries erected by my rights as a citizen. I am concerned about the effectiveness of security theater. I want to travel without my naked body being viewed, or my clothed body being touched, by strangers at the airport.* I want my elected politicians to do something. The first is to consider our options.

Below is a draft letter to my most local elected official, the 11th Ward Alderman of Chicago. I’ll send this to him to his office at 3659 S Halsted Street after Thanksgiving week.

Do you have ideas for making it better? My opinion is at the end.

Dear Alderman Balcer,

I understand that airports in the United States can elect to remove the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and provide their passenger screening services.

You have probably heard that is widespread confusion, anger, and disgust at how some people passing through America’s airports are being treated. Many object to having strangers view them naked, and others are reporting feeling groped by strangers – all in the name of preventing terrorism. The federal Government Accountability Office reported that it could not confirm if the current “Advanced Imaging Technology” (AIT) machines (either backscatter x-ray or millimeter wave) would have detected the explosive material someone attempted to use around Christmas 2009.

I haven’t yet decided if I will include this photo of a sleeping TSA officer at Chicago’s Midway (MDW) airport in 2007. Photo by Erin Nekervis.

As the City of Chicago owns O’Hare and Midway Airports, the City Council has power and authority over their operations.

I urge you and your colleagues to investigate the effectiveness of the TSA’s AIT machines, their protection or lack of protection of Chicagoans’ privacy, the level of training each TSA worker receives, and the possibility of using different passenger screening techniques in the Chicago Airport System, without the aid of the TSA.

I have enclosed an article by the Toronto Star from December 30, 2009, that briefly explains how security works at airports in Israel, a country under daily threats of bombing, and real bombing, without the use of expensive and unexplained machinery.

Steven Vance
11th Ward Resident

*I really want some high-speed rail.

Addendum, 11/19/10: After reading how an airline pilot refused to have his body groped or viewed naked, and describing his experience with the TSA on a message board, I wanted to post the pilot’s comments (via Gizmodo):

Roberts’s reply: “If your perspective prevails [that Roberts’s actions had no effect in changing TSA policy] – and I’m afraid it may – we may all live to find ourselves wishing we had fought in earlier days, when we still had a fighting chance.”

This reminds me of the “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then why are you against it?” position. At the rate the TSA is removing rights protecting Americans from unreasonable searches (Fourth Amendment), I eventually won’t have anything to hide because I won’t be allowed to have anything – no water bottles, no 7 inches long bike tools, no shaving cream. This government, and many other governments, conducts intensive surveillance and collects godawful amounts of data. The government is not always benign, will share the data, and does a poor job of securing the data. I am not doing anything illegal, but that does not mean I want to share all of my activities with the government or the police.

Read more TSA horror stories, in this roundup from the UK-based Daily Mail.

Bike light giveaway event

November 11, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I’ve volunteered for three different organizations this year for approximately 43 hours. I feel my record keeping is falling a little short, though.

Last night was my favorite time. I took photos for the Active Transportation Alliance during a bike light giveaway (or “distribution”). I also helped attach a few lights to the hundreds of people riding bikes through Wicker Park without headlights. I spent most of my time in front of Bank of America at 1585 N Milwaukee, in the northbound direction.

All of the volunteers, including two staff members from ActiveTrans, and lawyer Jim Freeman (who donated the lights), made a lot of people happy.

Most states have laws requiring people riding bikes at night to have a front white headlight and a rear red reflector, although I, and many others, including ActiveTrans, suggest that you also ride with a rear red light. I’ll help you find a local bike shop if you’re in need of a light.

Frequency of Chicago women riding their bikes to work is down

November 9, 2010 / / 50 Comments

UPDATE: I added data from years 2005-2007 to complement existing 2008-2009 data in Table 1 as well as a visual representation. I have also added data from the 3-year estimates to Table 2.

UPDATE 01/20/11: Added the most recent 3-year estimate that the Census Bureau released in January 2011 to Table 2.

In September 2009, I wrote about “what the Census tells us about bicycle commuting” and a couple of days ago I compared Chicago to Minneapolis and St. Paul.

I want to update readers on the changes between the 1-year estimate data reported in that article (from 2008) and the most recent 1-year estimate data (from 2009). Percentages represent workers in the City of Chicago aged 16 and older riding bicycles to work.

Table 1 – Bicycling to work, 16 and older, 1-year estimates

Year Total MOE Male MOE Female MOE
2005 0.7% +/-0.1 0.9% of 621,537 +/-0.2 0.4% of 541,013 +/-0.1
2006 0.9% +/-0.2 1.2% of 645,903 +/-0.3 0.7% of 563,219 +/-0.2
2007 1.1% +/-0.2 1.4% of 656,288 +/-0.3 0.7% of 574,645 +/-0.2
2008 1.0% +/-0.2 1.5% of 657,101 +/-0.3 0.5% of 603,640 +/-0.2
2009 1.1% +/-0.2 1.8% of 651,394 +/-0.3 0.4% of 620,350 +/-0.1

View graph of Table 1. MOE = margin of error, in percentage points.

We should be concerned about the possible decrease in the percentage of women riding bicycles to work, especially as the population size increased. The margin of error also decreased, thus suggesting an improvement in the accuracy of the data. There have already been many discussions (mine, others) as to why it is important to encourage women to ride bicycles and also what the woman cycling rate tells us about our cities and policies. If the decrease continues we must discover the causes.

But Table 1 doesn’t tell the full story.

As Matt points out in the comments below, the number of surveys returned for 1-year estimates is smaller than that from the Decennial Census. Therefore, I took a look at the two 3-year estimates available, each having a larger sample size than the 1-year estimates (see Table 2). The data below seem to show the opposite change than seen in Table 1: that the number of women bicycling to work has increased. The crux of our quandary is sample size. The sample size is the number of people who are asked, “How did this person usually get to work LAST WEEK?”

Table 2 – Bicycling to work, 16 and older, 3-year estimates

Click header for data source 2005-2007 2006-2008 2007-2009
Total workers 1,203,063 1,230,809 (+2.31%) 1,291,709 (+4.71%)
Males bicycling to work 7,549 9,014 (+19.41%) 11,014 (+18.16%)
Females bicycling to work 3,474 3,741 (+7.69%) 3,542 (-5.62%)

The number of discrete females who bike to work has decreased in the most recent survey (2007-2009) while the total number of workers 16 and older has increased, giving females bicycling to work a smaller share than the previous survey (2006-2008). We must be careful to also note the margin of error for females bicycling to work is ±499.

Matt suggested that sustainable transportation advocates “push for higher sampling” to reduce “data noise” and increase the accuracy of how this data represents actual conditions. I agree – I’d also like more data on all trips, and not just those made to go to work. Household travel surveys attempt to reveal more information about a region’s transportation.

One of the two overall goals of the Bike 2015 Plan is “to increase bicycle use, so that 5 percent of all trips less than five miles are by bicycle.” Unfortunately, the Plan doesn’t provide baseline data for this metric, but we can make some inferences (there will probably be no data for this in 2015, either). The CMAP Household Travel Survey summary from 2008 says that the mean trip distance (for all trips) for Cook County households is 4.38 miles (under five miles). The same survey says that for all trips, 1.3% were taken by bike. These can be our metrics. *See below for men/women breakdown. Note that no data for “all trips” exists for the City of Chicago.

We will not achieve the Bike 2015 Plan goal unless we do something about the conditions that promote and increase bicycling. Achieving the goals in the Bike 2015 Plan is not one group or agency’s responsibility. The Plan should be seen as a manifestation of what can and should be done for bicycling in Chicago and we all have a duty to promote its objectives.

Please leave a comment below for why you think the rate of women who bike to work has stayed flat and decreased, or what you think we can do to change this. Does it have to do with the urban environment, or are the reasons closer to home?

*The same survey also said: Cook County males used the bike for 1.9% of all trips. Cook County females used the bike for 0.8% of all trips.

Table 1 data comes from the 1-year estimates from the American Community survey, table S0801, Commuting Characteristics by Sex for the City of Chicago (permalink), which is a summary table of data in table B08006. Table 2 data directly from American Community Survey table B08006.

Bike lane news around the country

November 8, 2010 / / 0 Comments

In other bike lane news around the country:

  • Kansas City, Missouri, now has two bridges with separated and protected bike lanes. A concrete barrier separates a combined walking and biking path from traffic.
  • Chicago’s door lane network grows a little more with new door lanes on Grand Avenue and Illinois Street. Downtown is in the most need of bike lanes so these should be useful (although I advocate for ones going through the Loop).
  • Separated bike lanes again under attack in New York City, this time on Columbus Avenue. It was only installed in August.
  • Washington, D.C., installed bike boxes and contraflow bike lanes (in August 2010) on a diagonal street at a six-way intersection (we have tons of six-way intersections in Chicago). John Allen, notable for his stance on bikeways and how they conflict with traffic engineering principles, approves of the design. In theory, contraflow bike lanes next to parallel parking lanes are good (and better than door lanes) because (1) the door to open is the passenger’s door, which opens less often than the driver’s door; (2) the person opening the door and the person riding the bike are staring at each other; and (3) if a person riding a bike collides with the door from the oncoming direction, the collision should be less damaging  to the person riding the bike. (You can thank former Mayor Adrian Fenty and former transportation commissioner Gabe Klein, and their staff, for these improvements to the bikeway network.)

The new door lanes in Chicago on Grand Avenue (as well as Illinois Street) involved a road diet, the narrowing or removal of main traffic lanes. You can see how a lane was removed – the stripes demarcating the two lanes have been ground out. This may reduce traffic speed and reduce confusion and collisions, a welcomed change. Watch a video of the bike lane striping being applied.

In Washington, D.C., a unique and adapted bike lane design for a diagonal street where it crosses two other streets at a six-way intersection. Another way to demonstrate what a bicycle lane could do.

Chicago’s first protected bike lane!

November 5, 2010 / / 0 Comments

UPDATE 04-28-11: I’ve written new articles about this subject. The first is “Put the first cycle track somewhere else.” Then there’s my list of proposed protected bike lane locations.

Chicago just got its first two-way protected bike lane! And all because of a construction detour for the next 17 months!

I’m sort of joking, but sort of not.

This detour from the Lakefront Trail onto a street for 100 feet should give Chicagoans a taste for what a protected bike lane looks like, until April 2012. You can see it’s quite simple to build: shift traffic over, install K-rail concrete barriers, paint a dividing line. But what’s simple to build is not always simple to implement.

But how can we get a real one constructed?

It’s not for lack of demand. But it could be that our demand for a safer bike lane is not well known.

The Chicago Bicycle Program has “proposed” a buffered bike lane on Wells Street (by merely displaying a rendering of it on the backside of a “public meeting” handout). They have no released any further information about this. It would most likely be paid for with Alderman Reilly’s Menu Program funding. (Each alderman gets $1.3 million annually to spend at their discretion and he spent some of it on new bike lanes on Grand Avenue and Illinois Street.)

Contact the Alderman to let him know you want to be able to bike more safely on Wells Street into downtown. And make sure he and the entire Department of Transportation (CDOT; contact Commissioner Bobby Ware) know that people who ride bikes want to be involved in its design; when it comes to informing the public, CDOT has a lot of room for improvement. They could do this by being more timely in providing project updates, like the status of awarding contracts or starting construction on streetscape projects (the website lists the names and locations, but no other information). A major project missing is the Lawrence Avenue streetscape and road diet between Ashland and Western.

Other streets in Chicago are ripe for protected bike lane similar treatment. Can you suggest some places? I’ll keep a list here where we can debate the pros and cons of each location. Through an educated and data-supported campaign, we can advocate for the best locations at which protected bike lanes should be installed.

The new two-way protected bike lane in Chicago on a Lake Shore Drive offramp. More photos.

The Sands Street bikeway becomes protected as you ride closer to the Manhattan Bridge ramp. More photos of biking in New York City.

Protected bike lanes are all the rage in New York City. They have several miles of buffer and barrier separated bike lanes. Portland, Oregon, also has a diversity of protected bikeways. Minneapolis has several miles of off-street trails going to and through neighborhoods (which is why they’re key to the overall network).