Category: People

Pride Parade 2012: Easier on transportation system over last year

June 28, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Bodhi Spiritual Center says, “You are fabulous”. 

After last year’s near-meltown of transportation surrounding post-parade trips, parade organizers, aldermen, and the city redesigns the parade route, to make it longer and eliminate the hard to access “internal triangle” between Halsted and Broadway (with a vertex at Grace/Halsted/Broadway). The meltdown was that thousands of people tried to board at the CTA Belmont Station. The station stopped allowing new passengers 5 times to ease overcrowding. I can’t recall if trains had to skip the station because they were full.

The new design allowed for better access from more CTA train stations, more bus routes, and allowed for more even spectator dispersal along the route (with 6 pedestrian crossings operated by many police officers). The CTA, which is usually very good at communicating service changes, made a webpage dedicated to the Pride Parade and even designed their own map. That and their social media communication stressed the other stations paradeogers should use: Wilson, Sheridan, Addison, and Fullerton. That was in addition to the other bus routes that now had closer access to the changed route.

I wrote about the 2011 transportation experience on Grid Chicago in which I suggested shutting down private vehicle traffic on more streets and further away from the parade route, allowing only buses and bicyclists. I couldn’t tell if that happened this year. Last year I entered the parade “shed” on Belmont and then Addison. All east-west streets it seemed were closed to traffic from Clark Street to Halsted Street (which is a good thing). Clark Street was closed this year for a couple of blocks south of Diversey Avenue (also a good thing).

Chicago Fire Department miniature trucks. 

I didn’t notice these last year, but the fire department utilized ATV-like trucks to transport sick spectators. I didn’t see any Chicago police officers riding ATVs, but I may have read the department abandoned those because of their increased danger on crowds and the officer driving it.

I think the route changes were effective in making for a better (and safer) parade experience. Organizers and the City’s OEMC estimated attendance at 850,000, just 50,000 over last year. Because of the changes and the great weather (it was very breezy), I expected a higher increase. Some people who attended last year may have been turned off by the unease of the crowded viewing experience.

CDOT’s response to helmet inquiry at MBAC

June 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Waiting at a red light on Milwaukee Avenue at Western Avenue. 

Erica Salem of the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) emailed me in February asking about data on children’s bike accidents (crashes) and any related data about ER visits and head injuries. I forwarded her to my friend Bill who is working on such data at UIC’s Urban Transportation Center (UTC).

She was looking for information to make the case for kids to use helmets while biking. And she brought this up at the June 2012 Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council (MBAC). She’s a member of the council under the new rules and format.

Here’s a paraphrased version of the discussion:

Erica Salem (ES): How do you quantify the increase in bike riders in the city?

Mike Amsden: That’s a huge challenge. Bike/ped data collection is very difficult. Right now it’s just work trips, and there’s even talk of eliminating that. We do before/after data collection of bikeway facilities. That’s where this Green Lane Project will come in and help with promotion and resources.

ES: The CDC released data showing 88% CPS middle schoolers and 94% of CPS high schoolers don’t wear a helmet when biking. Some of us think there should be an ordinance for helmet use in children. And some of us don’t.

Charlie Short: Safe Kids Program out of Children’s Memorial has done bike helmet giveaway. Targets low-income children. That seems to be where most initiative is coming from.

ES: The funds are drying up. I’ve talked to them already.

James Boratyn (of Illinois Department of Transportation): IDOT helps fund Children’s Memorial’s Safe Kids Program [also funds Bike Ambassadors]

Alex Wilson (of West Town Bikes): Major issue was storage concerning their move. We just filed a grant for 500 helmets.

Luann Hamilton (representing the Chicago Department of Transportation): We’ve always taken the position to provide education, outreach, and providing free helmets, as opposed to mandate. Of all the issues the police are dealing with, it doesn’t seem like a useful way to deal with the issue. [emphasis mine]

A cogent and welcomed response.

Mayor Bloomberg (of New York City) responds directly to a question about helmet laws:

It would be better if everybody wore a helmet. I think in a practical sense a lot of people won’t, and they’re better off taking a bike than driving or walking in the streets and getting pedestrian accidents (sic). The most important thing we can do is separate bicycles lanes from traffic, and that’s one of the things we’re really trying to do.

Infrastructure and traffic enforcement will do more to reduce injuries than helmets.

My friend Brian pointed me to this article about how a helmet law may make a killed child’s parents (somewhat) responsible for their own child’s death. A 14-year old boy was cycling and killed by a then-48-year old driver. The boy was not wearing a helmet but state law requires that children 15 and younger wear helmets while cycling. The lawsuit was filed by the driver, from prison, in 2010. I don’t know what the outcome is.

Updated June 19 at 13:34 to add Mayor Bloomberg’s response to a question about helmet laws. Updated June 28 at 20:31 to add link to child death article. 

Terminology debate: crash versus collision

May 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The following is an email conversation between myself and Travis Wittwer, a cool guy in Portland, Oregon, whom I stayed with in April 2010. We’ve had similar conversations before about the language writers (mainly newspaper article authors) use when speaking about and describing situations where “people and their bicycles make contact with people and their cars” (yes, there’s an easier way to say that, read on).

Travis: Continue reading

GM hired a transit rider to promote their Volt, I think

May 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

A screenshot of the GM Chevy Volt ad I saw on Hulu. 

If you’re like me and most Americans, you probably see an advertisement for a car at least once a day. In an ad I watched on Hulu tonight, it appears GM filmed someone who takes buses and trains (or rides her bike) to sell people on the Chevy Volt.

The woman (the ad’s overlay text makes it seem like she’s a real owner) says, “I don’t event know what it’s like to stop and get gas” and “I am probably going to the gas station about once a month, probably less”.

With a car that only gets 35 MPG city, 40 MPG highway,* and has a range of 379 miles, she must be taking the bus for all those other trips she has to make each month! Or she walks to work each day and bikes to the grocery store on weekends. Or she just rarely leaves the house. But I don’t think the ad implies any of these things: instead it’s telling viewers that this automobile has amazing gas mileage (the ad never mentions it has an electric motor component).

The “average American” makes 3.79 trips per day with an average trip length of 9.75 miles. If this Volt driver was that average person, she would be driving 1,108.58 miles every 30 days. And her car doesn’t have that much range. It has a third of that.

She might have bad memory, though, about visiting gas stations.

The Toyota Prius, for comparison, gets 51 MPG city, 48 MPG highway,* and starts at $7,000 less.

* These are only estimates. The Chevy Volt gets 94 MPGe when running on purely the electric motors.

N.B. The Chevy Volt website shows a photo of the car in the position where it will spend most of the time: parked. I appreciate that accuracy!

Thank you, madam, for riding your bicycle in Chicago

May 6, 2012 / / 0 Comments

A senior citizen carries Trader Joe’s grocery bags on her bicycle at 2960 N Lincoln, a mile from the nearest Trader Joe’s. 

It’s probably extremely difficult, and I can only guess why you do it. But thank you for shopping by bike. Bonus points for having front and rear baskets, carrying her purse on her handlebars, and not wearing a helmet. You are setting the direction Chicago needs to move in, 8 to 80.

I wonder what she’d recommend to make cycling in Chicago better.

Photo by Drew Baker.