Writing about cities
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
The Chicago Crash Browser as it looks now. This only exists on my laptop and no place else. I can’t put it online because it’s so inefficient it would kill the server.
I presented my Chicago Crash Browser to attendees of an OpenGov Hack Night three weeks ago and gathered a lot of feedback and some interest from designers and programmers there.
We collaboratively came up with a new direction: instead of focusing on creating a huge web application that I proposed, we (anyone who wants to help) would start small with a website and a couple of crash data visualizations. The visualizations would serve two purposes:
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!
A taxicab waits at Milwaukee and Western. This is not the driver in question. Call 311 to report incidents.
On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, I will be in court as a witness to my own taxicab complaint. The charges are administrative and are in the context of the terms of the driver’s chauffeur license:
These are based on my description of the incident, where I told of being honked at, being passed within 3 feet (twice), being told to ride in the bike lane (on a street without one), and having them stop quickly in front of me (twice).
I don’t want to tell you more until after the hearing, which the City lawyer described as an abbreviated bench trial. Each side will make a brief opening statement. The City prosecutor will call me to stand near the podium for a “direct examination”. Then the driver, or their lawyer, will ask me questions in a “cross examination” (look at those big “Law & Order” words).
I should be able to testify from memory but if I can’t remember the details of the incident, then I’ll say “I can’t remember” and I’ll read from my affidavit. I submitted a very detailed attachment with the affidavit, including a geographic diagram of where and what happened.
The City lawyer I talked to told me there are four possible outcomes:
Mandatory retraining (classes at Harold Washington Community College) would be a likely addition, or even a sole outcome.
Updated 19:15 to add “not guilty” as a fourth possible outcome.
In this photo you can see the new community center and harbor master office, picnic tables, parking garage, and shade sails on the roof of the community center.
I completely agree with Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin’s description of those colored trees: “garishly painted recycled trees that goes overboard in an attempt to create a festive atmosphere”. I would prefer to see them removed and real trees take their place. I was saddened to see mature-growth trees being removed during construction. I appreciate a lot of the new features the marina brings to Burnham Park, like the upgraded playground, a small park on the pier and a bike trail that should bypass a lot of beachgoer traffic.
These mature trees were replaced with…
…these garish trees.
The sign in the background is outdated and should be replaced. To access the trail from 31st Street you ride down the driveway and then enter the sidewalk.
This playground looks like a lot of fun. It has a climbing wall!
I have some criticisms about the new design of how people access 31st Street from the Lakefront Trail and vice versa.
1. The distance from 31st Street to the LFT has increased from the previous design. Before there was a short hill to traverse from the street to the trail. Now one must enter the trail by sharing the driveway with automobiles, then entering a sidewalk, and then entering the trail. At this sidewalk entrance, there’s an outdated sign. It says “Yield to pedestrians in crosswalk” when state law says motorists must “stop for pedestrians in crosswalks”. I think this sign should be immediately replaced.
The crosswalk that connects the sole sidewalk leading people from 31st Street to the beach house should be here, instead of 50 feet further south as this is the quickest way to reach the beach (actually the quickest way is to walk through the grass on the left side of this photo or through the shrubs left of the photo, off screen).
2. This crosswalk is also too far from the beach house and people will be crossing the street at the end of the lower curve where there is no crosswalk and no sign.
New intersection to access the marina parking lot and boat launch area.
3. I’d like to know if the intersection here is timed or has a sensor. If it has a sensor, will it pick up the presence of cyclists? Regardless, this intersection is an improvement over the previous access path which couldn’t facilitate Lakefront Trail cyclists who wanted to travel westbound on 31st Street (they could use the south side sidewalk, which is inappropriate). Westbound cyclists can now share the driveway with automobiles (less than ideal) but can enter westbound 31st Street without any awkward sidewalk moves or crossing the Lake Shore Drive ramp against the light.
4. My good friend Calvin points out that the new marina doesn’t have storage for small sailboats like Lasers and Vanguards. These boats are a cheap and easy way to teach children and young adults how to sail and are more accessible to the wider population. Storage is less expensive and they can be operated alone. He says that only Montrose and Belmont have storage for these boats.
Further reading