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The Chicago Way: The Fullerton sinkhole

September 10, 2014 / / 2 Comments
the sinkhole before repair

The sinkhole before repair. Image from Smith’s newsletter.

In Alderman Michele Smith’s e-newsletter today is a story about #TheChicagoWay, which is that special way of fixing the streets we embrace in Chicago, despite our apparent disgust for low-quality infrastructure.

“Sometimes we really have to persist to get something fixed.” Here’s the story:

A deep sinkhole had formed at approximately 444 W. Fullerton Parkway, creating a significant public safety concern for both pedestrians and motorists. But no city department would repair it until we determined which agency was responsible.

So we called upon each potential agency, leading to almost a dozen separate site visits by various inspectors between July and August. We finally discovered that this site had been an old Commonwealth Edison utility area. The abandoned vault had deteriorated, resulting in the sinkhole.

I am happy to report that Commonwealth Edison filled in the old vault and restored the street. Success!

I would definitely call a sinkhole fix that happens within three months a success.

How would it work for you and your job security if it took two months to find who’s responsible for a known bug?

Other ways to identify #TheChicagoWay:

  • There is a cone or sawhorse-style barrier INSIDE of a hole. And then you’ll see that thing fall deeper into the hole and a new thing will be added.
  • For bigger holes, there are “safety” barriers INSIDE the hole instead of AHEAD of the hole.
  • How do you identify #TheChicagoWay in the context of streets?
after the sinkhole repair

The sinkhole and pavement after repair. Image from Smith’s newsletter.

Finding teardowns in Chicago

August 22, 2014 / / 5 Comments
1923 South Allport Avenue, built 1884

A recent suspected teardown, at 1923 S Allport in Pilsen (25th Ward, 19th place for teardowns from 2006 to now). The demolition permit was issued August 7 and the new construction permit was issued August 5. The new building will have an increase in density, with three dwelling units. Photo by Gabriel Michael.

From Wikipedia, a teardown is a “process in which a real estate company or individual buys an existing home and then demolishes and replaces it with a new one”.

You can find suspected* teardowns in the building permits data on Licensed Chicago Contractors by looking for demolition permits and new construction permits for the same address. I limited my search to situations where the demolition permit was issued within 60 days prior or subsequent to the new construction permit. This shows properties that have a quick turnaround (thus more likely to get built). I didn’t want to include buildings that may have been demolished one year and got a building two years later.

Analysis

This analysis is based on data since January 1, 2006, the start of the first complete year of building permits data in the Chicago open data portal, and ends today. The first demolition permit in this analysis was issued January 10, 2006, and its associated new construction permit was issued five days prior. There may be a case when the demolition permit and new construction permits were issued in different years, but for this analysis I only consider the year in which the demolition permit was issued. (In my review of permits since March I believe that new construction permits are issued most often after the demolition permit.)

Suspected teardowns

The number for teardowns decreased dramatically as the economic crisis approached.

Results

There were 1,717 suspected teardowns in Chicago distributed across 57 community areas (of 77, whose boundaries don’t change) and 45 wards (of 50, whose boundaries changed in 2012).

West Town, Lake View, and North Center share top billing, with the most teardowns each year, but Lake View was #1 for seven of 10 years. Other top five community areas comprise Logan Square (thrice), Lincoln Square (thrice), Bridgeport (twice), McKinley Park (once), and Near West Side (once).

From 2012 to current, the most teardowns occurred in Wards 32 (Waguespack), 47 (Pawar), 1 (Moreno), 44 (Tunney), and 43 (Smith). All of those wards include parts of the top three community areas mentioned above.

The sixth ward with the most teardowns in this period was 2 (Fioretti) but this boundary no longer represents any part of the pre-2012 boundary that covered almost the entire South Loop. That means Ward 2 is now covering the west side. Additionally, the 2nd Ward made sixth place with 28 teardowns and fifth place, the 43rd Ward had 60 teardowns.

The South Loop, represented by the Near South Side community area, has had 0 suspected teardowns from 2012 to now. There was one teardown in the entire time period, where a three-story commercial was demolished at 1720 S Michigan Ave and replaced with a 32-story residential tower.

What else do you want to know about teardowns in Chicago?

* Notes

I use “suspected” because it’s impossible to know from the data if buildings were actually demolished and constructed.

Download the data as CSV for yourself.

Morgan CTA station ranks highly in rail system for building permits

August 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments
Let Your Conscious Be Your Guide

The gutted cold storage warehouse in the background is within a quarter mile of the Morgan CTA station. Photo by Seth Anderson.

Excluding all of the Chicago Transit Authority stations in the central business district you’ll find that the new Morgan station ranks highly in the number of building permits issued within a quarter mile. It has a top spot when you calculate those permits’ estimated project costs. The CTA recently discussed with DNAInfo the results of a preliminary study it conducted that showed how the Morgan station is at the center of a lot of construction growth in the West Loop/Fulton Market area, and a contributing factor to this growth.

Now that Licensed Chicago Contractors shows you the two nearest CTA and Metra rail stations to each building permit, and I’ve become well-versed in writing PostGIS queries on the fly, I wrote a query that lists the CTA stations with the most building permits within a quarter mile (“nearby”).

First, though, let’s count how many stations don’t have permits nearby. With the query at the bottom you get a list of station names, the number of permits nearby, and a sum of the estimated costs of those permits sorted by the number of permits. Since I used a “LEFT JOIN” I also get a count of all the permits (the table on the LEFT) that don’t have a match with CTA stations (the table on the right).

There are 127 rows returned and a previous count of the table told me there are 145 stations, including ones outside the Chicago city limits. (There are stations in Cicero, Wilmette, Evanston, Rosemont, Oak Park, Forest Park, and Skokie.) The first row represents NULL, or all of the stations that don’t have permits nearby. That leaves me with 126 rows and 19 stations without permits, or 19 stations outside the City of Chicago.

I verified this by eyeballing it. I looked at a map and counted roughly 19 stations that wouldn’t have the 1/4 mile overlap with a Chicago building permit. The two Austin stations, on the Blue Line Forest Park branch and the Green Line Oak Park branch, are near Chicago and also showed up as a discrete station in the query results. Austin on the Blue Line was dead last, actually!

Let’s get back on track and look at Morgan now. I don’t think it’s fair to compare the Morgan station area with an expected, higher-activity area like the Loop and Central Business District so I eyeballed the list and started the #1 ranking with the first station outside the CBD.

  1. Armitage (Brown, Purple Express) is the station outside the CBD with the most building permits nearby.
  2. Damen-Milwaukee (Blue)
  3. North/Clybourn (Red)
  4. Addison (Red)
  5. Morgan (Green, Pink)

There you have it, from 2009 to today, the Morgan station had the fifth highest number of building permits outside of the Chicago Central Business District. It beat Fullerton (Red, Brown, Purple) in Lincoln Park, and Roosevelt (elevated and subway combined) in the South Loop. The station’s construction began in 2010 and the grand opening occurred May 24, 2012. During this period Morgan had the second highest amount of aggregated estimated costs at $199,911,953.00, behind North/Clybourn, at $218,118,037.37.

Take this analysis with several grains of Morton salt, though, because the following caveats are important to consider: building permits are really speculative development; much of these may be for kitchen renovations or porch reconstructions; I didn’t look up when it was “for sure” that the station was being built so I don’t know when developers would have become interested.

Looking at a longer period

I will, however, run a few more queries to find how Morgan’s position changes, starting with expanding the query to “all time” data (really the end of 2006 to today). It turns out that when looking through all available years Morgan’s position remains at #5 but other stations change position.

  1. Fullerton
  2. Armitage
  3. Damen-Milwaukee
  4. Addison
  5. Morgan

During this period, which covers the end of 2006 until today, Morgan had the highest aggregated estimated costs of the above five stations, at $236,707,083.00. It beat Fullerton’s amount of $160,825,680.30.

Looking only at “new construction”

Since these include all permit types, including water heater installations and window replacements, it doesn’t give us a good look at economic expansion in the areas surrounding CTA stations. I’ve filtered the data so only “new construction” building permits come through. I’m still interested in stations outside the CBD. Here’s how Morgan performed when looking at purely the quantity of new construction permits issued from 2009 to today:

  1. Armitage, 46 new construction building permits
  2. Southport, 38
  3. Addison (Red), 34
  4. North/Clybourn,
  5. Wellington,
  6. California-Milwaukee,
  7. Belmont (Red)
  8. Ashland (Green, Pink)
  9. Irving Park (Brown)
  10. Fullerton
  11. Damen (Brown)
  12. Division-Milwaukee
  13. Western-Milwaukee
  14. Ashland (Orange)
  15. Damen-Milwaukee
  16. Western-Congress
  17. Paulina
  18. Addison (Brown)
  19. Diversey
  20. Sedgwick
  21. Loyola
  22. Montrose (Brown)
  23. Sox-35th-Dan Ryan
  24. Morgan, 13 new construction building permits

Let’s remove that date filter and look at the whole building permits period of late 2006 to today.

  1. Southport (Brown Line), 80 new construction permits, all-time
  2. Armitage (Brown, Purple), 72
  3. Western-Congress (Blue), 66
  4. Addison (Red), 64
  5. Belmont (Red, Brown), 63
  6. Western-Milwaukee, 59
    Damen-Milwaukee, 59
  7. North/Clybourn, 55
    Diversey, 55
  8. Division-Milwaukee, 53
  9. Sox-35th-Dan Ryan, 51
  10. Wellington, 50
  11. 35-Bronzeville-IIT, 48
  12. Irving Park (Brown), 44
  13. Morgan, 43 new construction permits

Now switching the order method around and Morgan appears better when you look at aggregated estimated costs, from 2009 to today.

  1. Illinois Medical District, $236,020,000.00
  2. North/Clybourn, $172,373,335.00
  3. Loyola, $161,744,075.00
  4. Polk, $106,000,000.00
  5. Grand-Milwaukee, $77m224,500.00
  6. Wellington, $72m802,300.00
  7. Belmont (Red), $71,300,302.00
  8. Morgan, $68,300,800.00

Last query – remove the data filter and look at aggregated costs for the whole building permits period where Morgan maintains a top 10 position.

  1. North/Clybourn, $277029045.00
  2. Illinois Medical District, 236,020,000.00 (same as 2009 to today period)
  3. Polk, $188,794,975.00
  4. Loyola, $185,444,075.00
  5. Belmont (Red), $1635,00,085.00
  6. Fullerton, $129,444,051.00
  7. Wellington, $111,335,051.00
  8. Granville, $99,356,702.00
  9. Morgan, $83,995,800.00

The data I’d really like to have, though, is sales tax receipts for the same years. 

This is not a valid PostgreSQL query. The brackets indicate the options I was using to retrieve the above results. The geometries are in or transformed to EPSG 3435 (Illinois StatePlane East Feet) and 1,320 feet is a quarter mile.

SELECT
 COUNT (P .permit_) AS count,
 MIN (C .longname) as name,
 min(lines) as lines, 
 sum(_estimated_cost) as sum
FROM
 permits P left join
 stations_cta C
ON
 ST_DWithin (
  ST_Transform (P .geometry, 3435),
  C .geom,
  1320
 )
[WHERE] [EXTRACT (YEAR FROM issue_date) >= 2009] [_permit_type = 'PERMIT - NEW CONSTRUCTION']
GROUP BY
 C .gid
ORDER BY
 [count,sum] DESC

History of Chicago streets

August 10, 2014 / / 0 Comments
New bridge as seen from Division Street bridge

A new bridge over Halsted Street, opened in 2012 spanning the North Branch Channel on the west and north sides of Goose Island.

I found this document listing what appears to be all Chicago streets, their locations (relative to the Chicago grid whose origin is State/Madison), previous names, and namesakes. I doubt it’s hard to find, but I wasn’t looking for it. In fact, I was searching with queries people used before they came across Licensed Chicago Contractors.

“where is 435 w hobbie st chicago ill” was the specific query and I found Chicago Streets on the first page of results hosted on the Chicago History Museum’s website. (You’ll notice the hosting domain name has the acronym for the museum’s previous name, Chicago Historical Society.)

Halsted Street, which I often tell people is my favorite street because it goes through so many neighborhoods (with lots of gaps and railroads in between), was named after “two New York brothers William and Caleb who helped to develop the west end of the Loop.” William Butler Ogden, the first mayor of Chicago, named it.

Halsted Street was previously known as Egyptian Road from 1830 to 1837.

Halsted from Chicago Streets document

A screenshot of Halsted Street in the document.

Playing around with Chicago data: who’s running red lights?

August 2, 2014 / / 5 Comments
Range Rover with Illinois license plate "0"

A Range Rover with Illinois license plate “0” is seen moving 40 MPH in a 30 MPH zone through a red light at Ashland and Cortland.

I’m just seeing who’s driving around Chicago one night, using the Tribune-published dataset of over 4.1 million tickets issued from red light cameras.

The City of Chicago has installed at least 340 red light cameras since the mid-2000s to reduce the number of people running red lights and crashing. They’re supposed to be installed at intersections where there’s a higher-than-average rate of right angle (“T-bone”) crashes, which are more injurious than other typical intersection crash types.

Assessing safety wasn’t the Tribune’s story angle, though. It was about showing spikes in the number of tickets issued, which I verified to some extent. The article called the tickets issued during these spikes “undeserved” and “unfair”. The data doesn’t have enough information to say whether or not that is the case; a video or extensive photo review is necessary to rule out rolling right turns while the light was red (a much less dangerous maneuver unless people are trying to cross the street).

The first query I ran assessed the number of people who get more than one ticket from a red light camera. Since I was tired my query was a little sloppy and it missed a lot of more useful order choices and didn’t select the right fields. I fell asleep and started again in the morning. This time, I got it right in just two tries – I needed to try again because I mistakenly put HAVING before the GROUP BY clause.

Here’s the first query, in its final form, to retrieve the number of tickets for each license plate in each state (I assumed there may be identical license plates among states).

select max(ticket_number), max(timestamp), license_plate, state, count(*) AS count FROM rlc_tickets group by license_plate, state HAVING count(*) > 1 order by count DESC NULLS LAST

It resulted in 851,538 rows, with each row representing a unique license plate-state combination and the number of red light violations that combination received. You can reasonably assert that cars don’t change license plates more than a couple times in a single person’s ownership, meaning you can also assert that each row represents one automobile.

851,538 vehicles, which make up 35.1% of all violators, have received 2,601,608, or 62.3%, of the 4,174,770 tickets. (There are 2,424,700 license plate-state combinations, using the query below.)

select count(ticket_number) from rlc_tickets group by license_plate, state

Here’re the top 10 vehicles that have received the most violations:

  1. SCHLARS, IL, 78
  2. 9720428, IL, 59
  3. 8919589, IL, 57
  4. A633520, IL, 52
  5. 3252TX, IL, 45
  6. A209445, IL, 44
  7. N339079, IL, 44
  8. X870991, IL, 41
  9. 239099, IL, 41
  10. 4552985, IL, 40

The next step would be to design a chart to show these vehicles’ activity over the months – did the vehicles’ drivers’ behavior change, decreasing the number of red light violations they received? Did the vehicle owner, perhaps a parent, tell their child to stop running red lights? Or has the vehicle owner appealed erroneously-issued tickets?

When I ran one of the first, mistaken, queries, I got results that put license plate “0” at the top of the list, with only nine tickets (license plates with two or more zeros were listed next).

I googled “license plate 0” and found a 2009 Tribune article which interviewed the Range Rover-driving owner of license plate “0” and the problems he encountered because of it. The City of Chicago parking meter enforcement staff were testing new equipment and used “0” as a test license plate not knowing such that license plate exists. Tom Feddor received real tickets, though.

I then looked up on PhotoNotice the license plate and ticket violation number to find, indeed, the license plate belonged to someone driving a Range Rover at Ashland Avenue and Cortland Street on July 17, 2008. An added bonus was Feddor’s speed in that Range Rover: the camera recorded the car going 40 MPH in a 30 MPH zone.

I was done browsing around for the biggest offenders so next I wondered how many tickets were issued to vehicles licensed in Arizona, where U-Haul registers all of its nationwide vehicles. Arizona plates came in 29th place for the greatest number of tickets.

select count(*) AS count, state from rlc_tickets group by state order by count DESC NULLS LAST

As you may have expected, four surrounding Midwest states, and Ohio, rounded up the top five states after Illinois – but this isn’t notable because most visitors come from there and they each only comprise less than 1.3% of the total tickets. The next state was Florida.

  • 3,986,739, IL
  • 51,104, WI
  • 40,737, MI
  • 27,539, IN
  • 8,550, OH
  • 7,684, MN
  • 7,139, FL

What’s next: I’m working on finding a correlation between the number of reported crashes, and type, at intersections with red light cameras and the number of tickets they issued. I started doing that before running the numbers behind this blog post but it got complicated and it takes a long time to geospatially compare over 500,000 crash reports with over 4.1 million red light tickets.

What else do you want to know?

I will delete all comments that don’t discuss the content of this post, including comments that call red light cameras, or this program, a “money grab”.