Category: People

Freight trains in the city: photos from Ping Tom Park

January 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The train is entering the crossing. 

If you weren’t aware, Chicago has a ridiculous number of trains passing through here. We’ve been the freight train capital of the country for over 100 years (I’m not going to verify this). And apparently it takes a train the same amount of time to pass through Chicago as it takes to travel from here to Los Angeles.

One of the interesting places they pass through in Chicago is at Ping Tom Park, in Chinatown, on the Chicago River at 18th Street. A double track part of the CN line borders the park on the east, separating the park from rowhouses in Chinatown. The Chicago Transit Authority’s Orange Line elevated viaduct shares the right of way.

I was showing the park to some visitors from Spain after we ate at Joy Yee Noodles (2159 S China Place)*. The at-grade crossing bells starting to ring, and the red lights started to flash. Then the gates came down. We were trapped! That’s the neat thing about the freight railroad here and the park: there’s a single entrance that’s blocked by a train. And this one was long.

A pagoda in Ping Tom Park. Here’s another view of the pagoda where you can also clearly see the Orange Line viaduct. 

As we just arrived, we weren’t interested in leaving. We explored the new north section of the park. This outing gave me several opportunities to test out the capabilities of my new camera, a Panasonic GH1, and accompanying lens, a LUMIX G 20/f1.7mm (that means it’s fairly wide angle and has an enormous aperture)**. It takes great photos in the dark without a flash. I was photographing the train, using the “panning” technique – this means you set the focus beforehand and then move (pan) the camera with the object to ensure it appears in focus in the resulting image. I succeeded with 50% of the photos; my issue was choosing the right speed at which to pan the camera.

This photo is one of the better panning shots I created. 

The train, as many Illinois railfans probably expect, was carrying ethanol and empty flatbed cars, but also some hydrochloric acid. I’m going to guess some of the tankers were filled with America’s favorite artificial sugar: high-fructose corn syrup.

* There are two Joy Yee Noodles restaurants in the same Chinatown Square shopping center. They are of the same company.

** I bought the body from a friend and I bought the lens separately. I paid more for the lens than the body.

Meeting readers

January 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I was at the Streets for Cycling Plan 2020 meeting last night in the Garfield Park Conservatory. I was walking behind someone towards the meeting room and he turned to me and said, “Are you Grid Chicago?” (I realize he may be reading this.)

I said, “Yes,” and he immediately said “I read it every day. Thank you.”

I thanked him for reading. I like it when people tell me they read that blog and they appreciate what John Greenfield and I are writing. It definitely lets you know that (in addition to the comments that people leave) that the work we’re doing is important.

Anyway, I never know what to say to people who let me know they read Grid Chicago. I used to ask what their favorite article is and no one seemed to know how to respond so I stopped asking. To this reader, I asked, “Do you comment?” Also a lame question.

Sorry!

This photo of a bus with double articulation has nothing to do with this post. I didn’t have a relevant photo ready to go. 

Europe: A year ago at this time

January 4, 2012 / / 0 Comments

A year ago during Christmas, New Year’s, and today, I was on my 18-day trip through Europe. To share that trip (again), I’ve been uploading more photos from the trip to my Flickr. I’ll double the number uploaded in a couple of days. A year ago on January 3rd, I traveled from Bremen to Wuppertal, Germany, and then to Amsterdam, Netherlands, with train transfers in Venlo (at the border) and Eindhoven.

Italy

I added a bunch of new photos from Italy, mostly from the mountain bike ride I took in Como and Brunate with my friend’s brother. This was December 27, 2010.

Matteo and I on a mountain above Lake Como and very near the border with Switzerland on Monte Boletto. View on OpenStreetMap. 

A panoramic view of Lake Como and central Como. Brunate is a village on top of the mountain in the middle. We took the funicular up there. 

Germany

I also uploaded new photos of Bremen, Germany. I added many more pictures of the Valentin submarine pens, the ferry ride across the Weser River into Vegesack, and the trams that run constantly 24/7.

The tram station in front of the Bremen Haupthbahnhof (central station). Notice how familiar the people are with walking near and around the trams. View this on OpenStreetMap. This was January 1, 2011. 

What the submarine pen looks like from the land side, south of it. Read more about these storage facilities of Nazi submarines. This was January 2, 2011. 

From the Weser River ferry into Vegesack I saw this enormous shipbuilding facility with a yacht parked out front. It appears comparable in size to the submarine pen. This was January 2, 2011. 

More photos

The list above contains the dates for which I uploaded many photos recently. Here’s the full set of photos and here’s a collection of the different topics.

Past posts about this trip

I’ve written many times about this trip. If you want to read more, I suggest you go to my index of all trips I took in 2009 through 2011. The different cities and countries are linked there. But here are a couple other posts that are more than photos:

Logan Square McDonald’s crash map

December 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

This is part of a series of articles on the issue of lifting the pedestrian street designation on a part of Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square so that the McDonald’s franchise owner can demolish the building, build a new building, and build a double order point (“tandem”) drive through. Read the first post. 

At the hearing on December 13, 2011, Alderman Reilly asked if there was evidence of injuries or crashes due to the drive through. No one brought this data to the hearing. I cannot directly attribute the crashes to the existence of the drive through (unless I had the original crash reports), the drive through probably generates traffic that would not be there without the drive through, and it causes people to have to turn across a lane of traffic, either to enter the driveway on Milwaukee, or when exiting the driveway onto Sawyer, or when turning onto Milwaukee from Sawyer. I am looking for studies that research the impacts of drive throughs at fast food restaurants and pharmacies.

37 people were involved in 13 crashes within 100 feet of the center of the McDonald’s driveway from 2007-2010. Seven people were injured, one was a pedestrian. Double the search radius to 200 feet and we see 87 people involved in 35 crashes. Now, four pedestrians and cyclist were injured in addition to the 10 drivers and passengers injured.

Download the data in this map. View a larger map. 

This was my testimony at the zoning committee hearing (this may not be verbatim, but it’s really close):

Hello, my name is Steven Vance. I work as a consultant and writer on sustainable transportation advocacy and planning projects. The text amendment to modify the pedestrian street designation may negatively impact the continuity and safety in traffic of all modes along Milwaukee Avenue, which happens to be the city’s most popular bike route.

I ask that McDonald’s provide a traffic impact study before this matter is discussed further.

Lynn, a Logan Square neighbor, describes more of what happened at the hearing, as well as the next step at the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Here’s a map of all pedestrian streets in Chicago. View larger map.

Download a KML file of all the pedestrian streets. Download the shapefile of all the pedestrian streets. Thank you to Azad Amir-Ghassemi and Bill Vassilakis for their help in digitizing the table of pedestrian streets in the zoning code.

Update January 10, 2013

Driving danger

Crash data from the Illinois Department of Transportation show several crashes along Milwaukee Avenue from 2005 to 2011. If this location hadn’t been removed from the P-Street ordinance, McDonald’s would have been required to install both the drive-thru’s entrance and exit on Sawyer, where there is markedly less traffic than on Milwaukee (or not build them at all). This project has not only allowed a documented hazard to persist (despite the P-Street designation), but perhaps to be worsened.

From 2005-2011, there were 3 bike-automobile crashes and 5 pedestrian-automobile crashes within 200 feet of the drive-thru entrance, which includes the intersection of Sawyer and Milwaukee (where many people will drive back onto Milwaukee from the drive-thru exit). There were 82 car-car crashes in the same period. At a nearby intersection, Milwaukee/Dawson, an intersection with a similar retail makeup and traffic count, shows about half the number of crashes.

Some crash analysis based on gender/sex in Chicago

December 13, 2011 / / 0 Comments

A friend sent me an article saying that in London, women were experiencing crashes more often than men while cycling (BBC article). He asked if this was true about Chicago. So I crunched the numbers. This is very low-level, initial, take it with a grain of salt analysis. It appears that that is not the case for Chicago.

It appears that men walking or cycling are involved in disproportionately more crashes with automobiles than women, but not very disproportional.

1. Men make up 72.73% of people cycling (to work, the only trip purpose for which I have data). And they experienced 75.75% of the crashes with automobiles (to where is unknown).

2. Men make up 48.45% of people walking (to work, again, the only trip purpose for which I have data). And they experienced 53.38% of the crashes with automobiles (again, to where is unknown).

This analysis also points out shortcomings in our data. Even with National Household Travel Survey I don’t think I could get very detailed (as the statistics would be too aggregated and the sample size for Chicago would be small). This data is based on two sources: motorist crash reports from 2007-2010 from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT); and American Community Survey “means of transportation to work”. The last time a household travel survey was done in Chicago was 2008 and I just acquired that data last week. I need to figure out how to connect the people and trip tables and then I can do more analysis, getting exposure data for all trips, not just work.