Category: Transportation

Chicago may get its first on-street bike parking corral today

May 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Well, it won’t actually be built or open for “business” today.

The Wicker Park-Bucktown SSA (#33) will vote Tuesday at 7 PM on a motion (PDF) on whether or not to spend $4,000 to pay CDOT to install the city’s first on-street bike parking corral on Milwaukee near Damen in front of the Flat Iron building in Alderman Moreno’s 1st Ward. I plan to attend the meeting.

This location will serve Bank of America customers, Debonair clubgoers, and artists and gallery visitors at the the Flat Iron Arts Building. Note that the bike parking would be paid for by the Special Service Area’s revenue, which comes from taxing businesses in the district.

This won’t be the first bike parking corral in Illinois – that honor probably goes to Oak Park, a village east of Chicago. And it won’t be the first in the Midwest. Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, and Milwaukee will have beat us. In fact, Milwaukee’s first bike parking corral opened last Friday, May 6, 2011, in front of an Alterra café.

See list of cities around the world with bike parking corrals.

Oak Park’s on-street bike parking corral at 719 South Blvd., next to David A. Noyes Company and Anthony Lullo’s hair designs. I probably wouldn’t have selected this location, but it’s also across the street from the Oak Park Green Line station, so it can serve as overflow parking. Notice that at least 12 bicycles can park in the same space a car can park.

Milwaukee’s first on-street bike parking corral at 2211 N. Prospect Ave.,  designed by Chris Socha of The Kubala Washatko Architects and fabricated by Ryan Foat, Principal of Oxbow Studio. Photo by Dave Reid of UrbanMilwaukee.com.

New site brings together bike crash maps and projects

May 5, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I just finished creating a website that brings together my original Chicago bike crash map and all of its offshoots created by others. It also includes a more details and updated FAQ page as well as a short history of how the map and data came to be.

Enter the Crash Portal.

Right now it features projects from myself, Francesco Villa, Derek Eder, and George Aye’s students at the School of the Art Institute “Living in a Smart City” class. The site also links to my inspiration: Boston and San Francisco. If you have a related project, email me and I’ll figure out a way to add it to the site.

Screenshot of new Crash Portal

What I like best about bicycling in Chicago

May 3, 2011 / / 0 Comments

In an interview with a student reporter I gave this past weekend, I was asked to say what I like best about bicycling in Chicago.

I didn’t want to give an answer that would have been true about bicycling in any other city – the question was about here and not about riding a bike. My first answer may seem to disparage Chicago (maybe it won’t be printed…) but a few questions later I told the reporter I wanted to revisit this question.

My new answer put bicycling in Chicago in an extremely positive light and I was being entirely truthful:

What I like best about bicycling in Chicago is the existence of many and diverse subcultures. I mentioned that you can find a group of people who like riding fixed gear bikes, or find a group of parents who ride with their children, or even a group of cargo bike owners (actually, this subculture hasn’t taken off yet – I need to work on that). There are also group rides for every occasion, including one on Sunday for May Day, the Haymarket Ride to Union Park

I felt relieved that I was able to eventually answer this question. I didn’t want to leave the interview telling the reporter that I didn’t like anything about bicycling IN Chicago.

The 2010 Perimeter Ride rolls out after a late dinner at Superdawg. Photo by Eric Rogers.

Bike businesses that keep me pedaling: Lloyd Cycles (2 of 4)

May 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Four part series of Midwest bike-related businesses that keep me and my bike rolling without hassle.

When the two seat stays became disconnected from the seat tube, I brought my bicycle to my local shop and asked for help.

I’m pretty sure at this time I had no idea what anyone could do about it, nor did I know that Owen Lloyd, the co-owner of Blue City Cycles, could fix it himself. He transported the bike to the Lloyd Cycles “shop” at Bubbly Dynamics (actually a shared space with shared equipment, 1048 W 37th Street). It was fixed by cutting off the existing seat stay cap, removing the seat stay cap still attached to the seat lug, inserting a brand new seat stay cap, and brazing this onto the seat lug.

Thank goodness it all worked out. I didn’t have to hunt down a new frame, or transfer my components onto another bike. Three days later and I was rolling on a slightly more durable bicycle.

Here’s what it looked like broken.

Here’s what it looks like fixed. A fixed fixie!

A Lloyd Cycles bike for sale at Boulevard Bikes, 2535 North Kedzie Blvd.

More in this series

  1. UV Metal Arts – Read it here
  2. Lloyd Cycles - You’re reading it!
  3. Kozie Prery – coming soon, and with a contest!
  4. Planet Bike – coming soon

My television interview about dooring data

April 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Last week you heard me on WGN 720 AM talk about bicycling in Chicago and my bike crash map.

This week you’ll get to see me talk about bike crash and dooring data on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight program. It comes after a rule change announced on Sunday: the Illinois Department of Transportation will begin collecting crash reports for doorings. Previously, these were “unreportable.”

WTTW reporter Ash-har Quraishi came over to my house Thursday to ask me about what kind of information the crash data I obtained from IDOT includes and excludes.