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Finding data about traffic and roads in Illinois

June 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

There are two good websites that provide information about roads, traffic, and their many attributes. One is provided by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) called Getting Around Illinois (GAI). The second is the Traffic Count Database System (TCDS).

Both provide Average Daily Traffic (ADT) counts with TCDS making the information easier to find and presents more of it.

The GAI map has an important layer: jurisdiction. With that information you can determine who has “ownership” of a road. Jurisdiction has been an important factor in the nearly year-long delay of the Jackson Boulevard protected bike lane segment from Ogden Avenue to Halsted Street. IDOT has jurisdiction over this segment (which continues east to Lake Shore Drive; the road is also known as Route 66) and is requiring that the Chicago Department of Transportation do more analysis and revise their designs.

If you are looking for ADT counts, I highly recommend TCDS as it uses the more familiar Google Maps and doesn’t require the Microsoft Silverlight plugin (which is slow and often denigrated with poor usability applications).

GAI has truck routes and crash information as well.

Illinois licenses the dumbest drivers

June 11, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I took this photo to capture the sign, which I think has design problems. I didn’t know when taking it that it’d help me illustrate this story. The issue is this: From the left lane, one can make a left turn at an obtuse angle or an acute angle, but not two obtuse left turns. The same is true for the right lane: you can make an acute or obtuse right turn, but not two obtuse right turns.

On my ride home from Pequod’s Pizza tonight, I stopped at a red light in the left-most lane (there are two lanes, see photo) at Clybourn Avenue and Belmont Avenue, getting ready to turn left from northwest-bound Clybourn onto westbound Belmont.

A guy in a car behind me peaks his head out the window and asks, “Buddy could you move right a little bit?”

“I’m turning onto Belmont”, I explain, while pointing in the direction of Belmont Avenue and my specific left turn.

“So am I”, he says.

“Then according to that sign [to which I pointed], we’re both in the correct lane!”, I reply. (See photo of the sign.) I don’t remember if he said anything beyond that. I made the left turn, with he behind me, and when he passed me in the left lane (while I was cycling in the right lane) he honked.

Illinois licenses the dumbest drivers.

The Green Lane project is announced in Chicago

June 7, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I covered this event for a Streetsblog article (which has been delayed). Essentially the Bikes Belong Foundation and its donors are trying to get “better bike lanes” (Euro-style) installed faster across North America. It’s more of a strategic planning thing; the money isn’t going to be used for paying for construction of the bike lanes.

It’s about knowledge sharing and technical assistance and documenting the process. Eventually this knowledge will be shared with all cities in the whole country. But essentially, Austin, Texas, can use this network to be able to get some help from Chicago or San Francisco, without incurring on those cities’ ability to quickly get their own lanes in.

See all photos from the soirée and then the next day’s press conference (Wednesday, May 30, and Thursday, May 31).

I am somewhat impressed that the director of the Federal Highway Administration*, Victor Mendez, pictured above, came from Washington, D.C., to tell us about the federal government’s support for bike lanes. I wish he could have said the same thing about House Republicans’ support. They’re against transit, too. I asked Victor to tell transportation secretary Ray LaHood to read Grid Chicago.

Watch this video by Nick Brazinsky. I believe he was hired by Bikes Belong to shoot it. That he roller skates to take video makes the film a little cooler.

The Green Lane cities are:

  • Chicago, Illinois
  • Austin, Texas
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Portland, Oregon
  • San Francisco, California
  • Memphis, Tennessee (this one’s inclusion is exciting)

* The FHWA administers bike lane funding, as well as funding for roads and highways. They are in charge of the CMAQ, Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality, funding program.

Over here in Richmond, Virginia

May 26, 2012 / / 0 Comments

My first trip of 2012 was to Richmond, Virginia, to travel with my friend who is racing (in 60 minutes) in the North American Cycle Courier Championships (NACCC, see more photos).

I went for a two hour walk today (got a haircut, too) around Carytown and neighboring districts. The homes here are beautiful.

The photos are actually from yesterday. More will come later.

Stats from the OECD: Comparing traffic injuries of the United States and Netherlands

May 21, 2012 / / 0 Comments

For an article I’m writing for Architect’s Newspaper about the Chicago Forward CDOT Action Agenda, I wanted to know about traffic injuries and fatalities in the United States, but compared to the Netherlands and Denmark and other places with a Vision Zero campaign (to have 0 traffic deaths each year).

I already knew the OECD had a good statistics database and web application. With a few clicks, I can quickly get a table of traffic injuries (casualties) listing just the countries I want. I can easily select the years I want, too.

In one more click the web application will show a time animated bar chart. A feature I’d like to see added is dividing the figure (in this case traffic injuries) by the population. Check out the video to see what it looks like. The United States looks to be in terrible shape, but our country has several times more residents.

I had trouble downloading and opening the CSV file of the data table I created. The XLS file was damaged, also. The built-in Mac OS X Archive Utility app couldn’t open the .gz file, but I used The Unarchiver app successfully.

My calculations, based on data from OECD (national population and traffic fatalities), Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), and the American Community Survey:

Fatalities per 100,000 in 2009

  • United States: 11.02472
  • Denmark: 5.48969
  • Netherlands: 4.35561
  • Sweden: 3.84988
  • Chicago: 16.74891
  • United Kingdom: 3.83555

Chicago’s fatality rate per 100,000 citizens in 2009 was 16.75 (473 deaths on the roads). The fatality rate dropped in 2010: just 11.65 deaths per 100,000 residents (315 deaths on the roads; the population also decreased).

Updated September 28, 2012, to add the United Kingdom.